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HISTORY 

OF 

THE MEXICAN WAR, 

OR 

FACTS FOE THE PEOPLE, 

SHOWING THE RELATION OF THE 

UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TO 

SLAVERY. 

COMPILED FROM OFFICIAL AND AUTHENTIC DOCUMENTS. 

BY LORING MOODY. 

SECOND EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. 

/ 

(Y 

BOSTON: 
BELA MARSH, 25 CORNHILL. 

1848. 






Entered according to Act of Congress in the year Eighteen Hundred and 
Forty-Eight, by Loring Moody, in the Clerk's Office of the District 
Court of Massachusetts. 



ABNER FORBES, Printer. 



PREFACE. 



Many valuable works on the relation of the government of the United 
States to slavery, have already been given to the public. Among which are, 
"A view of the Action of the Federal Government," by Wui. Jay; '^ Rights 
of the Free States Subverted," by Joshua Giddings; and "The Slave 
Power," by John G. Palfrey. The editions of these, however, are quite 
exhausted; and for many reasons it is of great importance, that the facts 
contained in them should be condensed into a single volume. New develop- 
ments of the workings of Slavery through its grand agent, the government, 
are every day occurrences; and as the most remarkable of these are embod- 
ied in the commencement and progress of the war upon Mexico, I have 
collected from various sources some of the most prominent facts in the slave- 
holding relations of the government, including enough of the history of the 
annexation of Texas, and the Mexican War, to exhibit in a clear light, that 
the sole object of the nation, in the acquisition of the one, and the prosecu- 
tion of the other, is the extension and perpetuation of human bondage. 

In the preparation of this work, I haTe been materially aided by the above 
mentioned publications, for which I have taken great pleasure in giving 
credit. The facts contained in this book, and the positions which they are 
summoned to establish, are believed to be incontrovertible. They are based 
upon official documents which are conclusive on the points to which they 
refer. And we shall challenge the history of the world in ^vain for another 
spectacle of such hypocrisy and wickedness as that presented by this nation. 
It is true, that among the more savage tribes of Africa wars are still carried 
on for the purpose of adding to the victims of slavery. But these wars are 
mainly, though in part indirectly, chargeable upon the Americans; who, 
though they have denounced the foreign traffic, still give their countenance 
and encouragement to the trade, by keeping open markets for human flesh 
in the Capitol, and most of the principal towns and cities of more than half 
the Slates of the Union, and make the " protection, extension, and perpetu- 
ation of slavery, the vital and animating principle of the government." But 



the Americans profess to be somewhat better than savages. The^ profess 
to be republicans — democrats; and to believe in the natural equality of all 
men. That they are all created with an inalienabh right to freedom. They 
also baptize themselves in the rame of Christ. They call themselves a 
Christian nation; and their Chief Magistrate, it is said, is "a man of 
prayer.^* And they are girdling the earth with operations for the extension 
of their own ideas and practices. But, while the civilized world is awaking 
to a juster appreciation of human rights, and adopting measures for the ad- 
vancement of human welfare, by taking steps for the progressive abolition of 
old systems of oppression, the United States are carrying on a most bloody 
and atrocious war, for the purpose of crushing to the earth the best and 
fondest aspirations of the human soul, by enlarging the area, and piling up, 
and making strong and impregnable the frightful Bastile of Slavery. 

Few Americans are aware of the support the despotisms of the Old World 
derive from the system of slavery existing in this country. A few years ago 
the Chartists of England and Scotland weie shaking the United Kingdom 
with their agitations in behalf of an extension of the j)olitical franchise. 
They declared that the people were capable of self-government; and de- 
manded that they should have the same rights in the choice of their own leg- 
islators, as are enjoyed in the United States. And with the Constitution 
of these States, and their Declaration of Independence in their hands, as 
exponents of their views, they were doing much for the advancement of their 
great cause. But they were met by the friends of Monarchy, and the peo- 
ple were told to beware of them. That in the United States, whose institu- 
tions were so much lauded, three millions of the people were SLAVES. That 
their wives were torn from them and sold at public auction, and their children by 
the pound; and that bad as their condition was, the tallest Peer in the realm 
dare not rob them of either wife or child. That, though poor, they were not 
slaves. But the design of these agitators was to make them slaves, as their 
reference to the American Government clearly proved. 

An American gentleman,* while on a tour through Great Britain, in the 
summer of 1846, visited the tower of London, and by the payment of a fee 
was shown the Queen's Jewels, and among other things, her crown. While 
looking at the costly bauble, he was told by the lady who had it in charge, 
that the jewels with which it was studded cost three millions of pounds 
sterling. Feeling his Republican spirit stir within him, he said, he " thanked 
God he did not live in a country where one woman wore three millions of 
pounds on her head,f while others were starving for the want of potatoes." 
" Well," said an old sailor who was standing near, "you may thank God 
for what you please, but I thank him that I do not live in a land where ' All 
men are born free and equal,' and three millions are slaves." 

In one of James Brooks's " Letters fi-om Europe," he says, that during 

* James N. Buffum, of Lynn, Mass. 
1 14,490,000 dollars. 



PREFACE. ix 

llie reign of pro-slavery mobocracy in this country in 1835-6, the Emperor 
of Austria left it optional with some criminals to be sentenced to the galleys, 
or banished to the United States. 

Were the people of this nation and their institutions really what thev pro- 
fess to be, they would challenge tiie respect and admiration of the world. 
Instead of which, their hypocrisy only excites its disgust. And the king- 
ridden and priest-ridden subjects of Europe are made to bear their burdens 
in comparative silence, through fear of increasing their miseries in any 
efforts to better tiieir condition, by attempting to throw off the despotisms 
under which they are groaning. They are not now bought and sold like 
dumb beasts in the market; but they are told that millions of the poor are 
so disposed of in this country; and that such must inevitably be their fate 
under a government copied from the United States of America. 

This little book is sent forth upon its errand, in the hope, that so far as it 
is read, it may aid in unmasking the hypocrisy of a nation which more than 
any other strengthens the hands of tyrants and oppressors throughout the 
world. As a literary production it claims no merit. But its facts are un- 
hesitatingly submitted to public scrutiny. 

L. M. 
Boston, May, 1S47. 



INDEX 


a 








Pa?e 


Adams, J. Q. ...... 37 


Address of Texas Settlers, 




24 


Advertiser, N. Y., Commercial, 






. 15. 23 


Mobile, 








22 


Albany Argus, 








26 


Almonte's Letter, 








33 


Annexation, Bill for, Benton's, 








45 


" Resolve for. 








46 


" Speeches on. 








19 


** 'J'oasts on. 








22,43 


Arkansas Gazette, 








22 


Army and Navy Chronicle, 








.^0 


Attempts to obtain fugitives from Mexico, 








101 


Anstin, Moses, 








16 


" Stephen F.'s letter. 








23 


Austin Democrat, 








57 


Baker's Speech, 








64 


Beiiton, Tliomas H. 








19 


Benton's Speech — Texas Boundary, 








41 


" letter to Texan Congress, 








41 


Bocanegra's letter. 








33 


Boundary of Texas, 








15,41 


British Commissioners, Report of. 








26 


Canada, Efforts to obtain Fugitives from. 








98 


Calhoun's letter to Green, 








34 


" letters to Packenham, 








39 


" Speech, 








70 


Claims for Mexican Spoliations, 








47 


Cliarleston Courier, 








66 


Colonization Laws of Texas, 








21 


Commerce, Journal of. 








34 


Complaint of Texas Plotters, . 








25 


Constitution of Coahuila and Texas, 








26 


Crimes and Outrages, 








56 


Debates on Panama Mission, 








106 


" on the Wilmot Proviso, 








68 


" on the Creole Case, 








101 


Decrees of Mexico abolishing Slavery, . 








20,21 


Edgefield Carolinian, 








19 


Efforts to prevent Emancipation in Cuba, 








104 



INDEX. 



England, Treaties with, . 
Florida, Invasion of, 
" Purcliase of, 
" Treaty, 
War, 
Freemont's Exploring Expedition, 
Gaines, General, 
Gazeteer, Brooks', . 
Haile's Letter, 
Hayti, Relations to, 
" Constitution of, 
** Exports from, 
" Debates on. 
History, Ramsay's 
Houston's Letter, 
Horrors of the War, 
Henry Clay'3 Instruction to Anderson and Sargeant, 

" " " " J. R, Poinsett, 

Indian Relations, 
Insurrection, Southampton, 
Jefl'erson, Thomas, 
Kearney's Proclamation, 
Land Companies, 
Letter of Henry Clay, 

" « " " to Everett, . 
'« " James K. Polk, 
" " Martin Van Buren, 
" " Upsher to Murphy, . 
" " Gen. Taylor to War Department 
" " Marcy to Taylor, 
" " Marcy to Stephenson, 
Mexican Character, 

" Indemnities, 
Monterey, Battle of. 
New York Herald, 
Oceola, 
Oregon, 

Pensacola Gazette, 
Polk's Messages, 
Ringgold, Major, 
Scott's Mexican " Safeguard," 

'* Proclamation, 
Slidell, John, Letter of, . 
Spirit of the Times, Letter to, 
Taylor's Proclamation, 
Texas Constitution, 

" Necessities of, 
Tyler, John, Messages of. 
Tribune, N. Y., Letter to. 
Treaty with Mexico, 
Taylor's Blood-hound Letter, 



ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



Although the war upon Me:xico stands among the last of ihose acts of tlie 
American nation, which so strongly mark its slave-holding characler, its 
causes lie far back in the history of the country. But though last in the 
order of events, it stands first in importance. And, in giving to the public a 
second edition of *' Facts for the People," it has been thought best to re- 
arrange the work in such a manner as to place the history of the Mexican 
War at the commencement of the book; and this appeared the more impor- 
tant as this history occupies by far the larger part of the volume; and should 
therefore command the character and title of the work. 

This arrangement is therefore made in the confidence, that it will meet 
with the entire approbation of the reader. 

Boston, April, 1S48. 



A HISTORY OF THE MEXICAN WAR. 



Those who would ascertain the real cause of the war of the 
United States upon Mexico, which has resulted in the dismem- 
berment of that republic, must look far behind, in point of time, 
the advance of General Taylor to the left bank of the Rio del 
Norte. They will find that it is as old as the constitution itself. 

The system of slavery, inwrought into the framework of the 
government, soon became its controlling element. It could 
never serve. It would never submit to be circumscribed. It 
has ever sought to extend itself ;i^and hence it will appear, by 
reference to well established facts, that the colonization of 
Texas by citizens of the United States — the revolution in that 
province — the hurried acknowledgment of its independence 
by this government, its annexation to this Union, and the war 
with Mexico, are all connecting links in a chain of events, hav- 
ing for their sole object the indefinite extension and perpetuation 
of slavery, and the continued supremacy of the slave-power over 
this nationT/ 

There has been for many years a growing disquietude among 
the people of the South in regard to the prospects of their "pecu- 
liar institution," amounting to a gloomy apprehension. They 
have been fearful that with the disappearance of slavery at the 
North, and the admission of new free States, would return strong 
feelings of dislike and even hostility to their mcst cherished 
system ; and they set themselves zealously to the work of devis- 
ing plans for ils future safety. 

The American revolution gave a momentary impulse to the 
principles of universal freedom, and led the people of the North 
ern Slates to look with a favorable eye towards the emancipa- 
tion of their slaves. And, as early as the first of March, 1780, 
the General Assembly of Pennsylvania passed '' an act for the 
gradual abolition of slavery " in that Slate. The abolition of 
1 



a FACTS FOR THE PEOFLE. 

slavery in Massachusetts lakes its date one day later than that 
of Pennsylvania; with this difference, that in Massachusetts the 
abolition was innmediate, instead of gradual ; it being effected 
by the adoption of its constitution and " Bill of Rights," declar- 
ing that "all men were born free and equal."' The act of 
Pennsylvania vt-as followed by similar ones in Connecticut, in 
1784 ; in Rhode Island of the same date ; in all the States north- 
west of the Ohio river, by the ordinance of 1787; in New 
Hampshire in 1792 ; in New York in 1799 ; and in New Jersey 
in 1804. So that the fears of the South, for the safely of the 
"patriarchal institution," may appear to have been well grounded. 

In none of the States just mentioned, was slavery ever regard- 
ed as a " great interest ; " and therefore they could afford to 
dispense with it. But in giving up that which was of little value 
to themselves, they by no means made war upon the system, as 
existing in the States of the South. It is true that some of the 
" fathers of the revolution," both spoke and wrote against slavery, 
as unjust and cruel ; and petitioned Congress to take measures 
for its abolition. But the spirit of liberty which animated their 
bosoms departed with them ;_ and its place was occupied in the 
bosoms of their sons by the spirit of trade. So that what the 
fathers regarded, according to the laws of God, as a crime to be 
repented of and forsaken, was regarded by their sons, according 
to the laws of trade, as a fit subject for their ledgers. And as the 
slave trade from WASHINGTON, and Baltimore, and Norfolk, 
to New Orleans and Mobile, soon became, in consequence of 
prohibiting the foreign slave-trade, a profitable business to North- 
ern ship-owners, they resolved to stand by the '• compromises of 
theconslitution ; " and give to slavery its utmost scope and limit ; 
so that the fears of the Southern slave-mongers, after all, were 
not so well grounded as they at first imagined. They had many 
sworn friends among their "Northern brethren" yet. 

In addition, however, to these fears, there has been, from the 
beginning, among the people of the South, a growing jealousy 
of the increasing population, wealth, and influence of the North ; 
and a determination to one day wield the power by right of 
majority in the National Councils, which they have hitherto 
wielded by bullying and threats. To accomplish this object, it 
would be necessary to acquire a large amount of territory from 
some neighboring power, to be carved up into slave-holding 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE," tS* 

States, and admitted to the Union on tiie most favorable terms, 
fn casting about for the discovery of some territory suitable for 
this purj)osej their longing eyes naturally fell on Texas, the 
most easterly province of Mexico. And accordingly, a claim 
was set up to this territory, as " forming a part of the ancient 
province of Louisiana, which was ceded to the United States by 
France in 1803." And although Thomas Jefferson was one of 
the prime movers in the scheme of acquiring Texas, he admit- 
tedjhat this claim was without any foundation ; for in a secret 
message, sent to the House of Representatives on the 16ih of 
December, 1805, he used the following language : 

" Onr line to the West, is one which would give us but as^mg 
of land on the Mississippi." 

By the " line " here spoken of, was meant the western bound- 
ary of Louisiana, which was not at that time definitely settled; 
but lay somewhere between the Mississippi and Sabine rivers* 
Yet this claim was still pressed by Southern slave-holders, and 
their Northern abettors ; who declared that Louisiana extended to 
the South-west as far as the Rio del Norte, and was bounded on 
the West by that river. But what was the ground of this claim'? 

" Why it was, that La Salle having discovered the mouth of 
the Mississippi, and France having made a settlement at New 
Orleans. France had a right to one-half the sea-coast from the 
reouth of the Mississippi to the next Spanish settlement, which 
v»'as Vera Cruz. The mouth of the Rio Bravo was about half 
way from the Balize to Vera Cruz ; and so as grantees from 
France, of Louisiana, we claimed the Rio del Norte, though the 
Spanish settlement of Santa Fe was at the head of that river. 
France, from whom we received Louisiana, utterly disclaimed 
ever having even raised such a pretension. " * 

Nor w^as any portion of this territory occupied by the Ignited 
States. A correspondent of the New York Commercial Adver- 
tiser, writing from Nacogdoches, Texas, September 14, 1836, 
says: 

"For a long time after the acqnisilion of Louisiana, the United 
States exercised jurisdiction only to the Rio Hondo, but six 
miles west of Natchitoches, tlie immediate territory between this 
point and the Sabine river, about twenty miles, being considered 
neutral territory." 

♦Speech of J. Q. A lauig, II. R. May 25, 1S35. 



16 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

Yet, SO Strong was the desire of the slave-holders, and so fixed 
their determination to obtain possession of that country, that 

"No less than eight military expeditions were set on foot in 
the United States, and prosecuted nriore or less to make a loiig- 
ment, and effect revolution and conquest in Texas. The first 
was Burr's, in which Andrew Jackson was a confederate.'' * 

"By the Florida treaty, which was made in 1819, Spain re- 
leased her claim to the disputed territory East of the Sabine, 
apparently without any consideration except that of obtaining a 
quiet and acknowledged boundary ; '' — and that river was form- 
ally agreed upon as the boundary between the Spanish posses- 
sions on the west, and the State of Louisiana on the east. 

Hardly was the treaty ratified, establishing the Sabine as the 
western boundary of Louisiana, when the South began to com- 
plain of the ''surrender" of territory; and plans were set on 
foot for the " relrocession " of Texas to the United States. 

In 1820, Moses Austin, of Missouri, obtained a large grant of 
land in Texas, under the following circumstances : 

" Austin proceeded to Mexico, and from thence addressed a 
humble petition to the Catholic King, setting forth the cruel per- 
secutions which Catholics were undergoing from the Protestant 
malignants of the United States. The philanthropic petitioner 
invoked the piety and charity of his Catholic majesty to grant a 
goodly tract of land in Texas as an asylum for persecuted saints. 
The king granted the prayer of the petitioner, on condition that 
none but Catholics should enjoy (he benefit of the donation. 

" The land was granted gratuitously, to be parcelled out in like 
manner, and in certain proportions, among the refugees. The 
empresario, (the one undertaking the enterprise^) was to be enii- 
tled, upon the settlement of three hundred fanuiies, fo a very 
large tract within the same grant, in his ov/n right. The colo- 
nists were required to take the oath of allegiance, a test oath of 
their Catholicism, and to produce evidence of good moral char- 
acter. Upon obtaining their allotments of land, and residing 
thereon six months, they vvere to be deemed naturalized sub- 
jects. They were exempted from taxes for ten years, and from 
duties on all imports for their own use during the same period." f 

" After obtaining his grant, or privilege, he relumed to Mis- 
souri, and proceeded to carry his colonial enterprise into effect. 
Before completing his arrangements, however, Moses Austin 
suddenly died ; and his son, Stephen F. Austin, took the business 
into his hands, as the legal heir and representative of his father. 
He soon repaired to Texas with a considerable number of set- 

* D. L. Child ill the A. S. Standard, Oct. 8, 1846. 
-f Ibid. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 17 

tiers, the most of whom emigrated from the States of Tennessee, 
Missouri, and Louisiana. Bu' prior to his obtaining legal pos- 
session, or effecting the settlement of the families who accom- 
panied him, the revolution occurred, which annulled the author- 
ity of the government, and resulted in the separation of the Mex- 
ican provinces from the Spanish Crown. " * 

"After the revolution and the establishment of Mexican inde- 
pendence, this grant was confirmed by the Congress of that 
country. v.\z., in 1823; the moral qualifications of the colonists, 
the oath of allegiance and test oath, with needful changes of form 
in the two last, remaining the same. The liberal terms granted 
to colonists, exempting them from taxation and import duties for 
ten years, opened to them a wide field for smuggling and spec- 
ulation with the Indian traders, as well as the native inhabitants, 
which they did not fail to improve. Slaves were likewise held, 
in violation of the constitution and laws of the State, and the de- 
crees of the general government." f 

In this state of things, overtures were made to the government 
of Mexico, by the government of the United States, for the pur- 
chase of Texas for the purpose of annexing it to this Union. 
Until the year 1824, slavery existed without any restrictions 
throughout the Mexican States. In that year, measures were 
taken for its gradual abolition ; and in 1829, by a decree of Pres- 
ident Guerrero, in accordance with an act of the Mexican Con- 
gress, slavery was abolished throughout Mexico. 

'^ In March, 1825, a few days after the accession of Mr. 
Adams to the presidency, Henry Clay, Secretary of State, in- 
structed /. R. Poinsett, of South Carolina, our Minister to Mexico, 
to sound that government on ' the fixation of a boundary further 
west than the Sabine,' directing him to suggest ' the riv«r Brazos, 
or the Colorado, or the Snow-Mountains, or the Rio del Norte, 
in lieu of the Sabine." These instructions were renewed by 
Clay, in March, 1827, with considerable urgency, and with the 
additional instruction to offer one million of dollars for the entire 
country as far as the Rio Grande and the Rio Puereo, generously 
proposing to leave Sai-la Fe within the limits of Mexico. Soon 
after Jackson's accession, in August, 1829, Van Buren, his Sec- 
retary of State, again instructed Poinsett, ' to open a negotiation 
forthwith,' for the purchase of the Mexican territory as far as the 
great desert, between the Nueces and the Rio Grande." 

'• The bid w^as now increased to four millions ; and ' so strong,' 
adds the Secretary, 'is the President's conviction of the great 
value of the acquisition, that he will not object to go as high as 

* War in Texas. t !''•'' r 

1* 



13 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

Jive millions* In this letter, for the first time since the conclu- 
sion of the Florida treaty, a pretence of a right to a boundary fur- 
ther westj was brought forward. Van Buren states that it has 
been represented that the river called the Sabine is not the 
Sabine, but that the Neckcs is the real Sabine ! The explanation 
of this new pretension is, that the Neckes is from twenly to one 
hundred miles further west than the Sabine." 

All the overtures were promptly rejected by the Mexican 
Government, as they had no inclination to alienate any of their 
territory. Yet, as we have already shown, they evinced the 
greatest liberality to foreigners in granting them liberty to colo- 
nize their vacant lands. And as Texas had so long been a kind 
of '' Naboth's vineyard " to the slave-holders, who had deter- 
mined, Ahab like, to take possession of it, either by hook or by 
crook, immense tracts of land were designated for colonization, 
and contracted for by different "empressarios ; " partly for frau- 
dulent gain, but mainly for the purpose of obtaining by settle- 
ment and revolution, what the government could not obtain by 
negotiation. Several "land companies" were also formed in 
different parts of the United States, to aid in playing this deep 
game with the more certainty of success. 

"These companies created 'stocks' upon the basis of these 
grants, and threw them into the market. They also issued ' scrip,' 
authorizing the holders of it to take possession of certain tracts 
of land, within the lines marked out on the map, as the bounda- 
ries of their respective grants. To a bona fide settler, (and none 
else could obtain the land it pretended to convey.) this scrip 
could be of no advantage whatever, as the facilities and expense 
of procuring his tract according to law, would be the same, 
whether he held it or not. Every cent paid for it, therefore, 
was so much loss to the settler, and gain to the company." 

" Although these companies could only hold their grants 
through the medium of the empressarios, for the limited period 
of six years, and on the express condition of settling a specific 
number of families, they dealt largely in their ' stock,' and sold 
immense quantities of their ' scrip,' so that large sums of money 
have no doubt been realized by them, — while very few settlers 
have been introduced. Thousands, in various parts of the United 
States, purchased the scrip issued by them, and are interested of 
course in the adoption of measures to legalize the claims." f 

But this could not be done while Texas remained as a part of 

*See instructions ofVan Buren, Secretarv of State, to J. R. Poinsett, 
Minister to Mexico, August 25, 1S29. 
t War in Texas. 



FACTS FOR THK PEOPLE. 19 

Mexico, and the colonization laws under which these privileges 
were obtained, remained in peace. So that vast numbers of these 
land-jobbers, who had purchased those worthless titles to lands 
in Texas, had in common A'ith the slave-holders a deep interest at 
stake in the game of annexation. And the government found 
in them a strong corps of active allies, ever ready to second, or 
to devise any plan which seemed most likely to accomplish a 
measure of such vital interest to them. On this point we have 
the testimony of the Richmond Whig, (quoted by the Boston 
Atlas in June, 1847,) that "^t least two members of the Cabinet, 
Secretaries Upshur and Gilmer, were very large landholders in 
Texas, and that they strongly and incessantly urged the meas- 
ure." 

While these diplomatic and speculating chicaneries were in 
progress, Thomas H. Benton wrote a series of essays in the St. 
Louis Beacon, over the signature of " Americanus," on the im- 
portance to the South of the " retrocession " of Texas, 

On the subject of the essays, the Edgefield Caroliriian remarks : 

"This large fragment of the Mississippi valley, affording suf~ 
ficient territory for four or jive slave-holding States, was uncere- 
moniously sacrificed to Spain, with scarcely a pretext of demand. 
' Americanus' exposes the evils to the United States of this 
surrender, under twelve different heads. Two of them of par- 
ticular interest to this section of the country, are, that it brings a 
non-slave-holding empire in juxtaposition with the slave-holding 
South-west; and diminishes the outlet for the Indians inhabiting 
the States of Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee." 

A Charleston paper, also, then observed: — "It is not im- 
probable that he, [President Jackson,] is now examining the 
propriety and practicability of a retrocession of the vast territory 
of Texas, an enterprise which could not fail to exercise an im- 
portant and favorable influence upon the future destinies of the 
South, by increasing the votes of the slave-holding States in the 
United States Senate." * 

Leading Southern statesmen and influential journals spoke out 
boldly, and avowed the objects for which they wished to obtain 
Texas. 

In 1829, Abel P. Upsher said in the Virginia Convention : 

"Nothing is more fluctuating than the value of slaves. A 
late law of Louisiana reduced their value twenty-five per cent. 

*War in Texas. 



20 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

in two hours after its passage was known. If it should be our 
lot, as I trust it vvill, to acquire Texas, their price will rise" 

Philip Doddridge, anolher distinguished member, said : 

'^ That the acquisition of Texas would greatly enhance the 
value of the property in question," 

Mr. Gholson said in the Virginia Legislature, in 1832 : 

"That the price of slaves fell twenty-Jive per cent, within two 
hours after the news was received ol the non-importation act, 
which was passed by the Legislature of Louisiana. Yet he be- 
lieved the acquisition of Texas would raise their price ^/a/ per 
cent, at least." 

Mr. Merrick said in the Senate : — "It was his firm belief, 
that the annexation of Texas, as a market for slaves, would en- 
able the South to preserve her balance in the Union, that the 
Union would be more perfect, justice be better established, domes- 
tic tranquillity better insured, the common defence better provided 
for, the general welfare better "promoted, and the blessings of lib- 
erty to ourselves and our posterity belter secured." 

It has already been slated, that the government of Mexico had 
abolished slavery throughout that republic. In order to set the 
matter in a clearer light, the decree of July 13, 1824, prohibiting 
the trafHc in slaves, and the final decree of President GUER- 
RERO, utterly abolishing the system of slavery, are here inserted, 
together with extracts from the colonization laws of Coahula and 
Texas. 

Decree of July 13, 1824. 

Prohibition of the Commerce and Traffic in Slaves. 

The Sovereign General Constituent Congress of the United 
Mexican Slates has held it right lo decree the following: 

1. The Commerce and Traffic in Slaves, proceeding from 
whatever power, and under whatever flag, is forever prohibited, 
within the territories of the United Mexican States. 

2. The Slaves, who may be introduced contrary to the tenor 
of the preceding article, shall remain free in consequence of 
treading the Mexican soil. 

3. Every vessel, whether National or Foreign, in which Slaves 
may be transported and introduced into the Mexican Territories, 
shall be confiscated with the rest of its cargo; and the owner, 
purchaser, captain, master, and pilot, shall suffer the punishment 
of ten years confinement. 

Little more than five years afterwards, the following decree 
was promulgated by the President of Mexico. 



facts for the people. 21 

Decree of President Guerrero. 
AboUtiGn of Slavery. 

The President of the United Mexican States, to the inhabit- 
ants of the Republic: 

Be it known : That in the year 1829, being' desirous of sii^nal- 
izini^ the anniversary of our independence by an act of national 
Justice and Beneficence, which nriay contribute to the strength 
and support of such inestimable welfare, as to secure more and 
more the public tranquillity, and reinstate an unfortunate portion 
of our inhabitants in the sacred rights granted them by nature, 
and may be protected by the nation under wise and just laws, 
according to the provision in Article 30, of the constitutive Act; 
availing myself of the extraordinary faculties granted me, I have 
thought proper to decree : 

1. That Slavery be exterminated in the Republic. 

2. Consequently those are free, who, up to this day, have been 
looked upon as Slaves. 

3. Whenever the circumstances of the Public Treasury will 
allow it, the owners of Slaves shall be indemnified, in the man- 
ner which the Laws shall provide. 

Jose Maria de Bocanegra. 
Mexico, Sept. 15th, 1829, A. D. 

Here follows three sections from the colonization laws of 
CoAHULA and Texas ; the first exempting the colonists from 
burdens, and the last forbidding them to impose burdens on 
others. 

" Art. 17. — Every new settlement shall be free from ail con- 
tributions whatever, for the space of ten years from the time of 
its establishment, except such as shall be laid generally, to pre- 
vent or repel foreign invasion." 

"Art. 35. — The new settlers, in regard to the introduction 
of Slaves, shall be subject to laws which now exist, and which 
shall hereafter be made on the subject." 

" Art. 36. — The servants and laborers which, in future for- 
eign colonists shall introduce, shall not, by force of any contract 
whatever, remain bound to their service a longer space of time 
than ten years." 

The South foresaw, that if these decrees were enforced, the 
slaves of Louisiana, Arkansas and the neighboring Slates, would 
soon emancipate themselves by running across the Sabine, and 
taking refuge under the government of Mexico. She, therefore, 
stimulated the settlers to resistance, and they were totally disre- 
garded by the colonists from the United States, who introduced 
large numbers of slaves into Texas, and held them in bondage 



2'^ tACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

in spile of every attempt of the Mexican authorities to execute 
the laws. 

The Arkansas Gazette, a paper thoroughly indentified with the 
slave-tiohiiiii; interest, hehl forth this Language, in the year 1830, 
respecting the purchase of the Texas country : 

" No hopes need be enteitained of our acquiring Texas, until 
some other party more friendly to the United States than the 
present, shall predominate in Mexico, and perhaps not until the 
people of Texas shall throw off the yoke of allegiance to that 
government, which they will do no doub!, so soon as they shall 
have a reasonable pretext for doing so. At present, they are 
probably subjected to as few exactions and impositions as any peoj'ile 
tinder the sim.''^ 

The hint to the Texans to " throw off the yoke of allegiance," 
was even at that early day the expression of "a consummation 
devoutly to be wished." But as they had no just causes of com- 
plaint against the government of Mexico, " a decent regard to the 
opinions of mankind," made it necessary for them to manufacture 
some for the occasion, before publishing their " declaration of 
independence; " and this they were not long in doing. Before 
proceeding to that part of the subject, we will give a few more 
items of proof to the point under consideration. 

About this time, the "Mobile Advertiser" spoke out on this 
wise : 

"The South wish to have Texas admitted into the Union for 
two reasons: First, to equalize the South with the North; and 
secondly, as a convenient and safe place, calculated from its pe- 
culiarly good soil and salubrious climate, for a slave population. 
The question is therefore put by the South to Congress and the 
country, ' Shall we have justice done us by the admission of 
Texas into the Union 1 ' '" 

The following toast was given at a public meeting of eminent 
politicians at Columbia, South Carolina: 

" Texas — If united to our government as a state, it will prove 
an invaluable acquisition to the Southern States, and their do- 
mestic institutions.^^ ^' 

Feeling that all their efforts to get possession of that depart- 
ment peaceably would prove unavailing, the Texas plotters now 
began to prepare for *' the last resort of nations ; " the first step 
to which was, the publication of a string of complaints against 

* War in Texas, 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLfi. 23 

ihe government of Mexico, which they called their "declar- 
ation of independence." 

To show that the government had given thenn no just cause of 
complaint, the reader is referred to the article from the Arkan- 
sas Gazette, just quoted, and to the several documents which 
follow : 

Extract of a letter from Col. S. F. Austin, dated 

Monterey, Jan. 17, 1834. 
To the Ayuntamknto of San Felipe dc Austin : 

The general government are disposed to do every thing for 
Texas that can be done to promote its prosperity and welfare, 
that is consistent with the consliiution and laws, and I have no 
doubt the state government will do the same if they are applied 
to in a proper manner, 

I have long since informed the Ayuntamiento of Texas, of the 
repeal of the law of April, and of the favorable and friendly 
disposition of the government. 

Under these circumstances, the prospects of Texas are better 
than they ever have been. The national revolution is ended, a 
constitutional government exists, the people are obedient to the 
government and laws every where. Be the same in Texas, and 
have no more excitements, tolerate no more violent measures, 
and you will prosper, and obtain from the government all that 
reasonable men ought to ask for. 

Respectfully your most obedient servant, 

Stephen F. Austin. 

A correspondent of the Neiv York Commercial Advertiser, for 
whose trustworthiness the editor vouched, wrote as follow's, 
Sept. 14, 1836 : 

•• I came to Texas seven years since, possessed, as I thought, 
of good titles to a league of land, purchased in Nevv York, of an 
individual, who, to my certain knowledge, had sold many other 
leagues. On my arrival, I immediately applied to the proper 
officer to be put in possession of my land, when, much to my 
surprise, I was told that my titles were good for nothing; but 
was informed at the same time that I was welcome to land, and 
that I might select any vacant land. 1 accordingly possessed 
myself of a league of fine land, took the oath of allegiance to 
Mexico, and have lived in prosperity and happiness till the 
Texan revolution, since which time I must confess I have tasted 
more bitterness, grief, and trouble, than T had done in all my 
past life before. The like declaration will be made by every 
American w^ho settled in Texas, whenever they can do so with- 
out the fears that make them mute. I now allude to those 



24 JTACtS FOK THE PEOPLi!, 

Americans who had been settlers for any lime, and who had 
fulfilled the conditions entitling them to their lands, and mot for 
those who came for the express purpose of sowing a rebellion, organ- 
ized and matured by th«)se who had forged, or had purchased 
forged tides to lands, and were in advance, determined to cre- 
ate a rebellion that they might perfect those thles." 

The following is an extract from an address of a General Con- 
vention of Texas settlers, opposed to the proceedings of the con- 
spirators, held in November, 1834. 

" When a country is in a prosperous and flourishing condition ; 
when the mass of the people are contented and happy ; when all 
are industriously employed in their respective pursuits; it surely 
is a most unwise policy in any man or set of men to arouse dis- 
sensions among them, and scatter the seeds of discord and con- 
fusion. And we ask the people, we call upon the ' old settlers,' 
the pioneers, who have borne the brunt and hardships of popu- 
lating* the wilderness, if they have ever known a time when the 
prospects of the country were more flattering than at pres- 
ent! " " We ask you in the spirit of candor, and with the privi- 
leges of first pioneers, has the government ever exacted any- 
thing unreasonable of Texas'? If it has, we jnust, before God 
and our country, say we know it not. Again, for your experi- 
mental knowledge shall bear us out; has it ever burdened you 
with taxes, or the performance of arduous, expensive, or perilous 
duties'? Nay, has Texas ever borne any part in the expenses 
of sustaining the government that protects her citizens, their 
lives, their liberty, and their property? " 

"Another address put forth in 1835, the year the war com- 
menced, by an assembly of delegates from every precinct of 
Texas, states that some merchants, importers of goods, had re- 
fused to pay duties, that a lawless coast from Nueces to the 
Sabine had been the result; that a mob had made prisoners of 
and disarmed a detachment of soldiers stationed to support the 
revenue officers at Anahuac ; and that some Mexicans had been 
shot as spies. The address goes on : 

'That such outrages on the government under which w^e live, 
should have been committed by some individuals is much, very 
much to be lamented. But it is still more to be lamented, that 
Texas, whose interests lie in peace, and the majority of whose 
citizens are peaceful, should be dragged into a collision with 
their own government, by the precipitate and unjustifiable acts 
of 3. few. It is not that government, which has committed on us 
aggression. It is a certain part of the Texas inhabitants, who 
have proved to be the unprovoked and unnecessary aggressors.'' " 

"The document above quoted, maybe found in Edward's 
History of Texas. The war party is thus described by the his- 
torian, who was residing in Texas, as the preceptor of a semi- 
nary : 



rACTS KOR THE PEOPLE. ^ 

* I think I hear the reader exclaim, as every honest, sober, 
peaceful citizen of Texas did at the tinrie, (1834, 1835,) Good 
God, what a set of deceitful, ambitious, and ungrateful men 
have i?ot into our country.' ' They were joined by their best 
friends, the slave-holders, who said their negroes, G — d d — n 
'era, were on the tiptoe of expectation, and rejoicing that the 
Mexicans were coming to make them free.' ' The alaiming 
party were few in comparison, but they were talented, syste- 
matized, closely connected, and indefatigable in their endeavors 
to infuse suspicions against the General Government, and com- 
mit the country without the possibility of a recall.' ' This party 
has increased a hundred fold since 1832, by bad slave-holders, 
who have had two cargoes distributed among them by African 
kidnappers.' ' At this lime, the public press in Brazoria, (the 
only one in Texas.) had been taken possession of by the united 
company of Whigs^ as they termed themselves, but according 
to the opposition majority, land-jobbers, lawless merchants, slave- 
holders, office-seekers, and vain grog-drinking boasters. Reso- 
lutions and addresses were distributed in every (quarter by a 
committee of men appointed expressly for that purpose.' ' They 
threatened the peaceful inhabitants, whom they called Tories, 
with their vengeance, if they dared to interrupt them in their 
high-handed proceedings.' ' Still the addresses from the people 
or farmers to the Mexican authorities, were of the most friendly 
and peaceable character; but those from the agitators, and 
would-be office or landdiolders, were of the most threatening 
and dangerous sort.' " 

And yet, while these " men of Belial "'were thus riding rough- 
shod over the Mexican authorities, and trampling on the rights 
of the peaceful citizens, they were complaining of the " tyranny 
and oppression " of the government. And, as a specimen of 
what they complained of, we here insert two articles from their 
" list of grievances." 

" It [the General Government] denies us the right of wor- 
shipping the Almighty according to the dictates of our con- 
sciences, — by the support of a national religion, calculated to 
promote the temporal interests of its human functionaries, rather 
than the glory of the true and living God." 

The next extract is as follows : 

"It has failed and refused to secure on a firm basis the right 
of trial by jury, that palladium of civil liberty, and only safe 
guarantee for the life, liberty and property of the citizens." 

As an answer to this charge, it may be stated : that notwith- 
standing the " trial by jury " was unknown to the jurisprudence 
of Spain, from which Mexico derived her institutions, measures 
2 



26 FACTS FOR riisr. people. 

were already adopted Tor its establishment in lliat country, as 
the followin.;;^ article from the constitution of Coahula and Texas 
will prove. 

"192. One of the principal subjects for the attention of Con- 
gress, [Slate Legislature,] shall be to establish in criminal cases, 
the trial by jury, extending it gradually, and even adopting it 
in civil cases, in proportion as the advantages of this precious 
institution may be practically developed.'* 

The certainty of success which promised to crown the efforts 
of the slave-breeders, to wrest Texas from Mexico, had already 
given a fresh impulse to the Havana slave-trade, by opening a 
new field of operations to these PMterprisiir} g chizena of the United 
States, who now engaged in their old business of man-stealing 
on a large scale. 

The following extract from a report of the British commission- 
ers for the suppression of the slave-trade, appointed to reside in 
Cuba under the treaty of 1817, will throw some light on this 
subject. The report is dated Jan. 1, 1836 ; the extract as fol- 
lows : 

"Never since the establishment of this mixed commission 
has the slave-trade of the Havana reached such a disgraceful 
pitch, as during the year 1835. By the list, we have the honor 
to enclose, it will be seen that fifty slave vessels have safely 
arrived in this port during the year just expired. In 1833, there 
were twenty-seven arrivals, and in 1834, thirty-three : but in 
1835 presents a number, by means of which there must have 
been landed upwards of fifteen thousand negroes. 

"In the spring of last year, an American agent from Texas 
purchased in the Havana two hundred and fifty newly imported 
Africans, at two hundred and seventy-five dollars per head, and 
carried them away with him to that district of Mexico. This, 
perhaps, would have been scarcely worth mentioning to your 
lordship, had we not learned, that within the last six weeks con- 
siderable sums of money have been deposited by the American 
citizens in certain mercantile houses here, for the purpose of 
making additional purchases of bozal negroes for Texas. X. 
great impulse is thus given to this illicit traffic of the Havana. 
We thought the first experiment to be of little consequence; 
but now that we perceive fresh commissions arriving in the Ha- 
vana, for the purchase of Africans, we cannot refrain from calling 
your lordship's attention to the fact, as beins: another cause of 
the increase of the slave-trade of the Havana." 

The foregoing throws light on the following recent artif-nin 
the Albany Argus : 



FACT8 FOR THE FKOPI.E. 27 

"The fate of Henry Barlow, lale of the Commercial Bank of 
Ibis ciiy, has at lenuth been definitely ascertained. The agent 
sent out by the bank has returned, and stales tliat Bartow died | 
at Marianna, near Columbia in Texas, on the 30ih of June last, |- 
of the fever of the country, after an illness of about four week?. I 
He had purchased a farm on the Brazos, and, in company with ' 
a native of the country, had commenced an extensive plantation, 
ami sent S 10,000 to Cuba for the purchase ofshivesy ^ 

But as the "democracy" had been chiefly instrumental in 
" opening up" this new n\arket for the bodies and souls of men, 
Cuba was not long suffered to enjoy the rich profits of this lucra- 
tive traffic ; for as soon as the Texians got time to make a " con- 
stitution," acting on the reciprocal principle, that " one good 
turn deserves another," they set this matter right, by inserting 
in that instrument a provision, punishing as pirates any who 
should thereafter be so wicked as to defraud the Americans of 
their dues, by bringing slaves into that "Republic," from any 
other country than the United States, f 

The preparations which had been so long in progress were at 
length completed, and soon the forcible resistance to the laws 
assumed a systematic form — a stale of war existed; and al- 
though Texas did not declare in form, as the " mother " of this 
young " harlot " has since done, she did in fact declare, that the 
" war existed by the act of Mexico." $ 

The battle was now fairly begun. Large meetings of "sym- 
pathizers " were held in most of the principal cities and towns 
in the West, and on the sea-board ; flaming advertisements were 
inserted in Southern and Western newspapers, calling on the 
lovers of liberty to go and assist the " Texas patriots." The 
Stale arsenal at Cincinnati was emptied of its arms, and volun- 
teers rushed in crowds " to the rescue," until the battle of San 
Jacinto decided the controversy, and doomed jAIexico to dis- 
memberment, if not to ruin. The " independence " of Texas was 
achieved, and propositions were made to be admitted as a new 
State to the American Union. 

The bloody meteor emblazoned on its banner had scarcely 
bu!St from the murky clouds of slavery, when it was proposed 
to incorporate it with the bloodier "stars and stripes" of the 

* Legion of Lil)erty, 1844. 

t See Constitution of Texas. 

t Declaration of War against Mexico, l)y (^Jougress, Aujust 11, 1846. 



28 TACTS FOR THE PEOPLE, 

" Northern Republic." When the baleful light of that "lone 
star " first gleamed across our couatry, its lurid glare sent terror 
and dismay to the hearls of millions of our race. It was a sign 
in the political heavens, which foreboded the long continuance 
of the terrible night of slavery. 

But, Texas, as we have hinted, did not gain her independence 
alone and unaided. Left to herself, as we have clearly shown, 
she would never have sought il. Henry A. Wise boasted, that 

"It was the people of the great valley who conquered Santa 
Anna at San Jacinto ; and three-fourths of them, after vs/i' ning 
that glorious field, had returned peaceably to their homes." * 

To show that Wise spoke the truth, we here insert some of 
the "Notices" above alluded to. The following is from a 
North Carolina paper : 

"Who will go to Texas'? — Major J. H. Harry, of Lincoln- 
ton, has been authorized by me, with the consent of Major Gen- 
eral Hunt, an agent in the western counties of North Carolina, 
to receive and enrol volunteer emigrants to Texas, and will con- 
duct such as may wish to emigrate to that Republic, about the 
first of October next, at the expense of the Republic of Texas. 

J. P. Henderson, 
Brig. Gen'l of Texian Army. 
August, 1836." 

The following will give some idea of the extent to which these 
operations were carried on : 

Three Hundred Men for Texas. — General Dunlap of Ten- 
nessee, is about to proceed to Texas with the above number of 
men. The whole corps are now at Memphis. They will not, 
it is said, pass this way. Every man is completely armed, the 
corps having been originally raised for the Florida war. This 
force, we have no doubt, will be able to carry everything before 
it. — Vicksburg Register. 

In the summer of 1836, Capt. Lawrence opened a recruiting 
office in Front street, Cincinnati, for the purpose of enlisting 
^^ emigrants'^ for Texas. A public meeting was called to raise 
funds and fill up the ranks, at which N. C. R(;ad, United Slates 
district attorney for Ohio, attended, and made a speech in favor 
of the objects ; and a committee was chosen to help carry them 
out. An interesting notice of these proceedings was taken by 

* Speech in Congre.ss, April, 1842. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 29, 

Charles Hammond, Esq., and published ia the Cincinnati Daily 
Gazette. 

That the *• volunteer emigrants " were not alone in this pirati- 
cal crusade, will be seen by the following : 

" General Gaines was authorized to cross the boundary line 
with his army ; to march seventy miles into the Mexican territory ; 
and to occupy the military post of Nacogdoches, in case he should 
judge it expedient, in order to guard against Indian depredations ! — 
And further: he was likewise authorized to call upon the Gov- 
ernors of several of the South-western States for an additional 
number of troops, should he consider it necessary.^^ 

'' In order to furnish an excuse for the exercise of the authority 
thus delegated to him, many false rumors of Indian depredations 
and hostile movements were reported to the Commander of the 
United Slates forces, and he did not neglect the occasion for 
pushing to the very extent of his conditional instructions. He 
even went so far that the Executive became alarmed, lest the 
'■ neutrality '' of our government should he violated!! Yet he was 
still permitted to keep an imposing force stationed in the Mexi- 
can territory; and it was understood that he was in regular cor- 
respondence with the chiefs of the insurgent armies; also that 
his men were ' deserting ' and joining them in great numbers." * 

On the subject of these " desertions,-' hear the following from 
the Pensacola Gazette : 

"About the middle of last month. General Gaines sent an 
officer of the United States army into Texas to reclaim some de- 
serters. He found them already enlisted in the Texian service 
to the number of two hundred. They still wore the uniform of 
our army, but refused of course to return. The commander of 
the Texian forces was applied to, *o enforce their return ; but his 
only re])ly was, that the soldiers might go, but he had no au- 
thority to send them back." 

Thus it appears, that while these lawless desperadoes were 
in the act of plundering Mexico of one of her fairest provinces, 
for the purpose of annexing it to the United States, as a new 
market, in which republican slave-breeders and slave-traders 
might ply their traffic, the army of this same nation was hover- 
ing near, ready to aid the plunderers, if aid should be needed. 
As a proof of this, read the following extract of a letter from an 
officer in the United States army, published at the lime, in the 
Army and Navy Chronicle. Speaking of the advance of Gen. 
Gaines' troops to Nacogdoches, he says : 

* War in Texas, p. 29. 
2* 



30 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

*• It is to create the impression in Texas and Mexico, that the 
Government of the United Stales takes a part in the controversy. 
It is in fact lending to the cause of Texas all the aid which it can 
derive from the countenance and apparent support of the United 
Stales, besides placing* our troops in a situation to take an actual 
part in aid of the Texians, in case a reverse of their affairs should 
render aid necessary. The pretext of the anticipated invasion 
from the Indians in that quarter, is unsupported by the least 
probable testimony, althou<>h Gen. Houston has issued a procla- 
mation, dated at Nacogdoches, ordering out a body of two hun- 
dred Texian militia 'to sustain the United States force at this 
place, until reinforcements can arrive from Gen. Gaines.' " 

In the letter of Mr. Clay, to the National Intelligencer, dated 
Raleigh, April 17, 1844, he says : 

''The signal success of that revolution was greatly aided, if 
not wholly achieved, by citizens of the United States who had 
migrated to Texas." 

Mr. VanBuren, in his letter to Mr. Hammett, April 20, 1844, 
testifies to the same thing ; he says : 

" Nothing is either more true or more extensivelyknown, than 
that Texas was wrested from Mexico, and her independence 
established through the instrumentality of citizens of the 
United States." 

Such are the purposes for which Mexico was at first invaded, 
and despoiled of more than one hundred and sixty thousand 
square miles of territory ; and such the means by which these 
purposes have been accomplished. How she has been more 
recently robbed of the territory, — as James K. Polk tells us in 
his late message, "larger than the thirteen original States 
of this Union," — will be seen hereafter. 

As soon as the Texians had gained the battle of San Jacinto, 
they demanded to be "annexed to the United States." Not in 
the tone of suppliants, quite the contrary ; with the butt of their 
slave-whips, while their knuckles were dripping with blood, 
they were found on the steps, thundering at the door for admis- 
sion to the Union. The South was ready for the measure, as she 
ever had been. But the North hesitated, and wavered. 

The proposition was at first a startling one to the '' free States," 
as they are called, as if in derision. And many of their legisla- 
tures passed "resolves" against the measure, declaring that 
" Congress had no power to annex a foreign nation to the United 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 31 

Slates;" and declaring '-that no act done, or compact made, for 
such a purpose, by the Governnrient of the United Slates, will be 
binding on the States or the people." * But the South knew her 
men. They had of their own accord, harnessed themselves to 
her bloody car.f And patiently had they drawn it for more 
than fifty years. True, they had occasionally threatened to kick, 
when they felt its burdens so intolerably heavy, as to gall them to 
blood. But then a few cracks of her whip had always brought them 
to submission again — never to their senses — and she well knew 
it would be so now. So she laughed at their bluster, and man- 
aged the whole affair in her own way, as she had ever done. 

But even the patient ox has been known to get brcachy ; and 
the staid "sons of the pilgrims " 7H/g/i^ also become restive, if 
their yoke was suddenly made too heavy. The South knew 
that time and familiarity would work marvellous changes in 
men's feelings. Nor was she a stranger to the fact, that the 
thrifty Northerners loved money ; and set a high value on cotton; 
and cotton had already begun to grow in Texas; and sheetings 
from Lowell were sold there. So she took counsel of these 
things, and waited fur a " more convenient season." 

The year 1844 brought with it a Presidential election, and at 
this period the South resolved to make the grand issue. The 
North was loyal to the Union ; and she was given to compromis- 
ing. She had compromised in the beginning; and again in 
1820, when jMissouri came in. And the South knew that she 
would compromise again, if a little time was given. So {o famil- 
iarize {hem with the subject, she "kept it before the people," 
in her journals, and public speeches at Annexation meetings, 
and toasts at political gatherings. The two prominent candi- 
dates for the Presidency were Henry Clay of Kentucky, and 
Martin Van Buren of New York. The former was a slave-hold- 
er ; and, although the latter had long been known as a " North- 
ern man with Southern principles," the South distrusted him. She 
was afraid that he was not "sound to the core" on the subject 
of her favorite measure. To put the matter at rest, therefore, 
and to get the issue fairly before the people at the coming elec- 
tion, the two rival, and several other candidates who " offered," 

* See Resolves of Massachusetts Legislature, 1838, of Vermont, 1837, 
also of Rhode Island, Oiiio, aud Michigan, 
t Bv adopting the Constitutio.i. 



32 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

were requested to give a public expression of their views of the 
annexation of Texas. The reply of Clay, the Whig- candidate^ 
was evasive. To the question as put to him from different parts 
of the country, he returned various answers. In his letter to the 
National Intelligencer, dated Raleigh, April 17, 1844, he holds 
the following among other contradictory sentiments : 

" Under these circumstances, if the government of the United 
States were to acquire Texas, it would require along with it all 
the incumbrances which Texas is under, and among them the 
actual or suspended war between Mexico and Texas. Of that 
consequence, there cannot be a doubt. Annexation and war ivilh 
Mexico are identical. Now, for one, I certainly am not willing to 
involve this country in a foreign war for the object of acquiring 
Texas." *********# 

" If any European nation entertain any ambitious designs upon 
Texas, such as that of colonizing her, or in any way subjugating 
her, I should regard it as the imperative duty of the Government 
of the United States to oppose to such designs the most firm and 
determined resistance, to the extent, if necessary, of appealing to 
arms to prevent the accomplishment of any such designs." 

Mr. Van Buren, the Democratic candidate, expressed himself 
as decidedly opposed to the measure under existing circum- 
stances. 

His answer produced the greatest excitement among the circle 
of political Democrats at the Capitol. The Washington corres- 
pondent of the Liberator, under the date of April 28, 1844, says: 

" There is the greatest possible commotion here among the 
political elements. The Southern portion of the Democracy are 
furious at Van Buren's letter ; for their watch-word is, ' Now, or 
never.' There is considerable chance that he will be dropped, 
and Tyler, Cass, or Calhoun, taken up." 

He was mistaken, however, in regard to the slave-holders' can- 
didate, as almost every body else was. 

Several others, who were anxious to secure the nomination, 
expressed themselves as decidedly favorable to annexation. 

But the answer of J. K. Polk left no doubt among the slave- 
holders, as to their man. The following is from the first para- 
graph, dated " Columbia, Tenn., April 23, 1844 : " 

" Gentleme.\ : — I have no hesitation in declaring that I am in 
favor of the immediate re-annexation of Texas to the territory and 
government of the United State?." 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 33 

^^ Immediate re-anntxalion P^ There was something so deliberate 
and straight-forward in this, as to be entirely satisfactory, even to 
the unscrupulous villains who rule this nation. 

The Baltimore Convention assembled on the 27th of May. Mr. 
Van Buren was the idol of the Democratic party ; and large num- 
bers of the delegates from the North had gone there, pledged to 
his support. But slavery had been holding a conclave. And 
James K. Polk, of Tennessee, was selected as her most fitting 
tool. And Mr. Van Buren was unceremoniously dashed into the 
sea of political oblivion; and his worshippers were compelled to 
forego the pleasure of his nomination, and to vote for a man whom 
nine-tenths of them never before heard of. This was a terrible 
stroke to the Northern " democracy ;" but their necks were under 
the yoke, and although at first they exhibited strong symptoms of 
rebellion, a few smart pricks of the goad, and cracks of the whip, 
brought them to quiet submission again, and they have since 
trudged along with their burdens, as docile as ever. 

Pending these proceedings, John Tyler had negotiated a treaty, 
April 12, with Mr. Van Zandt, the Texian Minister, for the an- 
nexation of Texas as "a territory of the United States ;" by which 
the United States "assumed and agreed to pay the public debts 
and liabilities of Texas, however created^ which were estimated not 
to exceed ten millions of dollars." * 

Mexico had frequently declared her intention of subjugating 
Texas to her authority; and that any attempt to annex that prov- 
ince to the United States would be regarded by her as an act of 
war. In the letter of Mr. Bocanegra to Mr. Thompson, dated 
August 23, 1843, he said : 

"That the Mexican Government will consider equivalent to a 
declaration of war against the Mexican Republic, the passage of 
an act for the incorporation of Texas into the territory of ihe 
United States — the certaintij of ihe fact being siifficient for the im- 
mediate proclamation of a icar." 

General Almonte, the Mexican Minister, also gave not'ce to 
Mr- Calhoun, Secretary of State, that his government would look 
upon the annexation of Texas to the United States, as an espousal 
of the war of the latter against Mexico. This was done not as a 
threat, but merely to give notice of the "inevitable consequence" 
of such a step, for he says : 

""See article V. of du; treaty of atiiiexation. 



34 FACTS FOR THli: PROPLE. 

" And though the undersigned has declared, by express order 
of his government, that wai' will he the inevitnhk consequence of 
the annexation of Texas to the United States, he certainly has not 
done so with the object of intimidating the government of the 
Honorable Secretary of State, but with the view of showing how 
far Mexico would carry iier resistance to an annexation of that 
nature." 

But these repeated declarations were totally disregarded by this 
government ; and on the 19th of April, 1844, Mr Calhoun wrote a 
letter to Benjamin Green, American Charge at Mexico, in which 
he says : 

" It (the executive) has taken this step, (of annexation,) in full 
view of all possible consequences." 

While these proceedings were going on in the dark councils 
of the Cabinet at Washington, a large naval force under Commo- 
dore Conner was concentrated in the Gulf, and kept hovering 
along the coast of Mexico ; while a considerable military force 
was known to approach the frontiers of Texas and settle down on 
the banks of the Sabine. 

When the bargain had been struck, it was submitted to the 
Senate for ratification. That body sat with closed doors during 
their deliberations. But the overseers outside were unremitting 
in their efforts to coerce it into a compliance with this measure. 
Washington letter writers for the Northern press, also busied 
themselves with strenuous efforts to get the excitement up to the 
right pitch in that quarter, by representing, that if Texas was not 
secured now, it would be lost forever. 

The Washington correspondent of the Journal of Commerce, 
under date of March 30, 1844, says : 

"General Henderson arrived on Thursday ; Mr. Calhoun, yes- 
terday. The treaty of annexation of Texas to the United Slates 
will now be negotiated, and in a short time be laid before the 
Senate for ratification. 1'he national enthusiasm of the people of 
Texas, in view of the prospect of annexation, is overwhelming and 
irrepressible. If the Government of the United States postpone 
or refuse to ratify a treaty of annexation, the revulsion of the pub- 
lic mind in Texas will prove fatal to any farther negotiation on 
this subject: — and Gen. Henderson, as he is lelieved io be in- 
structed, will proceed to England, and negotiate with that govern- 
ment a commercial treaty on the basis of free trade, which will 
forever put at rest any farther desire on the part of tiie people of 
Texas to be annexed to the United States. 



FACTS FOR THE PKOPLE. S5 

Texas will become a great commercial depot for the trade of 
England and other European powers. The commerce of Texas, 
Mexico, and Central America, will be lost to this country. The 
agricultural interests of Texas will become antagonistical to the 
agricultural interests of our Soutiiern States, and in a few years 
Texas will raise every bale of cotton necessary for the consump- 
tion of the English manufactories. English (migration, English cap- 
ital, English commerce, English enterprise, and English influence, 
ivill overwhelm and swallow up everything that is American, and 
estrange the people of Texas from their loyalty to the United States. 
WHAT WILL THE SENATE DO ? '' 

The correspondent of the New York Herald, writing from the 
same place, says : 

" Gen. Henderson, the new minister from Texas, has a carte 
blanche to form a treaty of annexation with Texas, — to comply 
with exactly such terms as our government may dictate. He was 
appointed by President Houston, in obedience to the secret in- 
structions of the Texan Congress; Houston himself being opposed 
to the annexation with the United States, but preferring that with 
England." 

" In case the American government should refuse to accept the 
proposition of annexation, then General Henderson is authorized to 
proceed immediately to England, and to propose an alliance of some 
kind with that power, either as a colony or some other independent 
shaped 

" The question of annexation must also be determined before the 
termination of the present session of Congress. This is the third 
time which Texas has knocked at the door of the Union for admission 
since 1837; and if the treaty of annexation he refused now, the decis- 
ion is final and fatal, both to Texas and to the United States. IT 
IS THE LAST CHANCE." 

Again, the same writer unburdens himself as follows ; 

Washington, March 31, 1844. 

" First and foremost, in point of irresistible necessity, are the 
affairs of Texas. Her crisis is come. Her necessities are upon 
her, not in the future, but in the present; she cannot wait. The 
case is issued, the sheriff's hand is already upon the victim's 
shoulder, and the only alternatives are bail or jail." 

" The time now is come when Texas must and will either unite 
with us, or depart from us ; be for us, or against us ; come under the 
protection of the mg'is of the American Eagle, or crouch beneath 
the paw of the British Lion; when her untold and incalculable 
agricultural and commercial resources shall go to enrich either 
these United States, or the kingdom of Great Britain. General 
Henderson is now here with plenary powers ; and before he leaves 
us, and before this Congress adjourns, the fate of Tews must he defi- 
nitely sefifed." 



a© FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

That, all this was a mere trick, a fly to catch Cabinet gudgeoriv^ 
withal, we have the testimony of Sam Houston, at that time Presi- 
dent of Texas. In a letter, dated Huntsville, Texas, July 18, 
1847, he quotes a paragraph from a letter of Ex-President Tyler, 
published in the Weekly Union of the ]2th ult, confirmatory of 
these rumors, and then says: 

"It seems from this position assumed by Mr. Tyler, that he 
either imagined the authorities of Texas were favorable to those 
intrigues, and were willing to compromise her rights and interests 
as a nation, or that they could not perceive the force and effect of 
the web which was iceavino; around htr destiny ! Now, either in- 
ference would do injustice to her character. The authorities of 
Texas had relied for years upon a plain and frank proposition for 
annexation, and had hoped to be met by a cordial and manly ac- 
ceptance. They were disappointed. Texas was treated with 
coldness, reserve, or palpable discouragement- In this condition 
of our affairs, comn)on sense, without uncommon sagacity, sug- 
gested the only feasible plan to attain the desired object, and that 
was, to excite jealousy and alarm on the part of the politicians 
and people of the United States, in relation to the future commer- 
cial and political connection of Texas with European nations. 
This was easily accomplished, by treating with silence all the 
charges which were made by editors of various newspapers in the 
United States. 

The Chief Magistrate of Texas was charged with 'treason;' 
selling Texas to England; subsidizing her to France; and in a 
short time 'astounding disclosures' of all these transactions would 
take place I All these charges remained uncontradicted by the 
journals of Texas, and the effect was all that could be desired ! 
Jealousy toward England and France was awakened. This be- 
gat excitement, which originated phantasies and conjured up r-.;- 
tions of intrigues, which had existed only in imagination." 

Besides, there was no danger that Texas would be " annexed " to 
Great Britain, as there existed no slave-holding affinities between 
the two nations. 

The injunction of secresy was at length removed, and the treaty 
with the accompanying documents, were published to the world. 
Their revelations were truly astounding. The treaty, — some 
notice of which has already been taken, — defined no boundaries 
to Texas whatever ; but left it to include as much of the Mexican 
territory as the " contracting parties " could lay their hands on. 

Accompanying the treaty, was a long correspondence, carried 
on since 1842, between different American Ministers to Texas 
and Secretaries of State of the United States, in which both had 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE, 37 

expressed strong desires to g^et speedy possession of Texas, as tlie 
only means of propagating the race of slave-holders, and saving 
the infernal system from extinction. Some extracts from these 
extraordinary documents are here given, upon which the reader 
can furnish liis own comments. About this time England was 
supposed to be exerting her influence to obtain the abolition of 
slavery in Texas. 

On this subject, Mr. Upsher, Secretary of State of the United 
States, wrote numerous letters to Mr. Murphy, Minister to Texas, 
from which we make extracts. August 8, 1843, he Avrote as 
follows : 

"A movement of this kind cannot be contemplated by us in 
silence. Such an attempt, upon any neighboring country would 
necessarily be viewed with very deep concern ; but when it is 
made upon a nation whose territories join iht slavt-holding States 
of our Union, it awakens a still more solemn interest. It cannot 
be permitted to succeed, without the most strenuous eiforts on our 
part, to arrest a calamity so serious to every part of our country." 

" The establishment in the very midst of our slave-holding States, 
of an independent government, forbidding the existence of slavery, 
and by a people born, for the most part, among us, reared up in 
our habits, and speaking our language, could not fail to produce 
the most unhappy effects upon both parties. If Texas were in that 
condition, her territory would afi'ord a refuge for the fugitive slaves 
of Louisiana and Arkansas, and would hold out to them an en- 
couragement to run away, which no municipal regulation of ours 
could possibly counteract." 

"The States immediately interested would be most likely to 
take the subject into their own hands. They would perceive that 
there could not be any security for that species of property, if the 
mere crossing of a geographical line could give freedom to the 
slave. Few calamities could befall this country more to be de- 
plored, than the establishment of a predominant British influence, 
and the abolition of domestic slavery in Texas." 

Murphy to Upsher, September 23, 1843. 

" Pardon me if I am too solicitous on this subject. I feel the 
deep interest at stake. Our whole Southern interests are involved 
in the negotiation, and with it the interests of this Union itself. 
The great blow to our civil institutions is to be struck here, and 
it will be a fatal blow, if not timely arrested." 

"England is anxious to get rid of the Constitution of Texas, 
because it secures, in the most nervous and clear language, the 
rights of the master to the slave; and it also prohibits the intro- 
-3 



OO FACTS roH THE PKOPLE. 

duction of slaves into Texas from any other nation or quarter than 
the United States." 

"Now all the United States has to do is, to aid the y)eople of 
Texas in sustaining their Constitution, which, while it effectually 
secures the rights of the master, secures to the people the bles- 
sings of civil, political, and religious liberty. 

On the following day he wrote as follows : 

"The Constitution of Texas secures to the master the perpet- 
ual RIGHT TO HIS SLAVE, and prohibits the introduction of slaves 
into Texas from any other quarter than the United States." 

"If the United States preserves and secures to Texas the pos- 
session of her Constitution and present form of government, then 
have we gained all we can desire, and also all that Texas asks or 
wishes." 

Mr. Upsher to Mr. Murphy, September 23, 1843. 

" So far as this government is concerned, it has every desire to 
come to the aid of Texas, in the most prompt and effectual manner. 
How far we shall be supported by the people, I regret to say is 
somewhat doubtful. There is no reason to fear that there will be 
any difference of opinion among the slave-holding States ; and there 
is a large number in the non-slave-holding, with views sufficiently 
liberal to embrace a policy absolutely necessary to the salvation of 
the South, although, in some respects, objectionable to themselves^ 

Mr. Upsher to Mr. Murphy, JVovember 21, 1843. 

" It is impossible to be too watchful or too diligent in a matter 
which involves such momentous consequences, not only to our 
country, but to the whole civilized world. The view which the 
government takes of it, excludes every idea of mere sectional in- 
terest. We regard it as involving the security of the South ; and 
the strength and prosperity of every part of the Union." 

Upsher to Murphy, January 16, 1 844. 

" But this is not all. If Texas should refuse to come into our 
Union, measures will instantly be taken to fill her territory with 
emigrants from Europe. Extensive arrangements for this have 
already been made, and they will be carried into eftect as soon as 
the decision of Texas shall be known." 

" But the first measure of the new emigrants, as soon as they 
shall have sufficient strength, will be, to destroy that grand domes- 
tic institution, upon which so much of the prosperity of our fron- 
tier country depends. To tliis, England will stimulate them, and 
she will also furnish the means of accomplishing it. 1 have com- 
mented upon this topic in a despatch to Mr. Everett. I will add, 
that if Texas should not be attached to the United States, she cannot 
maintain that institution ten years, and probably not half that time^ 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 



39 



About this time, Great Britain was cautioned against thrusting 
in any of her anti-slavery interference in this matter, on this wise : 

Mr. Calhoun to Mr. Packenham, British Minister, April 18, 1844. 

" It is with still deeper concern that the President regards the 
avowal of Lord Aberdeen, of the desire of Great Britain to see 
slavery abolished in Texas; and, as he infers, is endeavoring, 
through her diplomacy, to accomplish it by making the abolition 
of slavery one of the conditions on which Mexico should acknowl- 
edge her independence. Under this conviction, it is felt to be 
the imperious duty of the Federal Government, the common repre- 
sentative and protector of these States of the Union, to adopt, in 
self-defence, the most effectual measures to defeat it.'" 

Calhoun to Packenham, April 27, 1844. 

" The United States, in concluding the treaty of annexation 
with Texas, are not disposed to shun any responsibility which may 
fairly attach to them on account of the transaction. The meas- 
ure was adopted by the mutual consent, and for the mutual and 
permanent Avelfare of the two countries interested. It was made 
necessary, in order to preserve domestic institutions, placed under 
the guaranty of their respective constitutions, and deemed essen- 
tial to their safety and prosperity." 

These official papers show, beyond a cavil, what the design 
of the government was in annexing Texas, and that it had deter- 
mined to push this design to its accomplishment, regardless of con- 
sequences. 

The Senate also called on the Executive for the orders, if any, 
which had been given to the military and naval commanders here- 
tofore alluded to. In communicating to the Senate, the orders 
which he had given to General Taylor and Commodore Conner, 
the President says : 

" I have to inform the Senate that, in consequence of the dec- 
laration of Mexico communicated to this government, and by me 
laid before Congress at the opening of its present session, an- 
nouncing the determination of Mexico to regard as a declaration 
of war against her by the United States the definitive ratification of 
any treaty with Texas annexing the territory of that republic to 
the United States, and the hope and belief entertained by the Ex- 
ecutive that the treaty with Texas for that purpose would be 
speedily approved and ratified by the Senate, it was regarded by 
the Executive to have become emphatically its duty to concen- 
trate, in the Gulf of Mexico and its vicinity, as a precautionary meas- 
ure, as large a portion of the home squadron, under the command 
of Captain Conner, as could well be drawn together; and, at the 



40 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

same time, to assemble at Fort Jesiip, on the borders of Texas, 
as large a military force as the demands of the service at other 
encampments would authorize to be detached." * 

In the very midst of these warlike demonstrations the President 
was making loud professions of friendship, and an earnest desire 
to preserve the friendly relations existing between the two repub- 
lics. In the message accompanying the treaty, he says : 

"To Mexico, the Executive is disposed to pursue a course con- 
ciliatory in its character, and at the same time to render her the 
most ample justice, by conventions and stipulationvS not inconsis- 
tent with the rights and dignity of the government." 

The course which he had pursued so far, was about as "concili- 
atory in its character" as that of the highwayman, who, with a 
pistol at the throat of his victim, commands him to " deliver or 
die." And, after plundering her of her possessions, lie had pre- 
pared " to render her the most ample justice " at the mouth of the 
cannon. 

That Tyler knew that a state of war at that time existed be- 
tween Mexico and Texas, and that he was endeavoring to involve 
this nation in that war, by espousing the quarrel of the latter, we 
have his own confession; a little farther on in the same message, 
he says : 

"It, (the Executive,) has made known to Mexico, at several pe- 
riods, its extreme anxiety to witness the termination of hostilities 
between that country and Texas." 

"The war which has been waged for eight years, has resulted 
only in the conviction, with all other than herself, that Texas can- 
not be re-conquered. I cannot but repeat the opinion expressed 
in my message at the opening of Congress, that it is time it had 
ceased." 

A plain spoken man might also say, that he knew he was lying 
when he said, "that Texas cannot be re-conquered ;" for he im- 
mediately goes on : 

" I repeat, the Executive saw Texas in a state o^ almost hopeless 
exhaustion, and the question was narrowed down to the simple 
proposition, whether the United States should accept the boon of 
annexation upon fair and even liberal terms, or, by refusing to do 
so, force Texas to seek refuge in the arms of some other power." 

Although Thomas H. Benton of Missouri, was deeply anxious 
to get possession of Texas, as we have already shown, he had not 

* Message to the iSeuate, May 15, 1844, 



FACTS FOR THK PEOPLE. 41 

the assurance to claim the Rio del Norte as its western boun- 
dary. He well knew that such a claim Avas a gross outrage on the 
rights of Mexico ; that it vyas an attempt to rob her of an immense 
tract of her territory, including large portions of four distinct 
States, in addition to Texas, and he had the honesty and manliness 
to avow it. In a letter to the Texan Congress, dated April 30, 
]844, he says: 

"Of course, I, who consider what lam about, always speak of 
Texas as constituted at the time of the treaty of 1819, and not as 
constituted by the Republic of Texas, comprehending the capital 
and forty towns and villages of New Mexico! now and always as 
fully under the dominion of the Republic of Mexico, as Quebec 
and all the towns and villages of Canada are under the dommion 
of Great Britain!" 

In his masterly speech on the treaty, May 6th, 1844, he said : 

" Let us pause and look at our new and important proposed 
acquisitions in this quarter. First: there is the department, 
formerly the province of New Mexico, lying on both sides of the 
river, from its head spring to near the Passo del Norte ; that is to 
say, half way down the river. This department is studded with 
towns and villages ; is populated, well cultivated, and covered with 
flocks and herds. On its left bank, (for I only speak of the part 
which we propose to re-annex,) is, first, the frontier village, Taos, 
3000 souls, and where the custom-house is kept, at which the Mis- 
souri caravans enter their goods. Then comes Santa Fe, the cap- 
ital, 4000 souls ; then Albuqurque, 6000 souls; then comes scores 
of other towns and villages, all more or less populated, and sur- 
rounded by flocks and fields. Then comes the departments of 
Chihuahua, Coahuila and Tamaulipas, v^ithout settlements on the 
left bank of the river, but occupying the right bank, and command- 
ing the left. All this — being parts of four Mexican departments, 
now under Mexican Governors and Governments — is permanently 
re-annexed to this Union if this treaty is ratified, and is actually 
re-annexed from the moment of the signature of the treaty, accord- 
ing to the President's last message, to remain so until the acquisition 
is rejected by rejecting the treaty ! The one-half of the depart- 
ment of New Mexico, with its capital, becomes a Territory of the 
United States; an angle of Chihuahua, at the Passo del Norte, fa- 
mous for its wine, also becomes ours; a part of the department of 
Coahuila, not populated on the left bank, which we take, but com- 
manded from the right bank by Mexican authorities; the same of 
Tamaulipas, the ancient Nuevo San Tander, (New St. Andrew,) 
and which covers both sides of the wver from its mouth for some 
hundred miles up, and all the left bank of which is in the power 
and possession of Mexico. These, in addition to the old Texas, 
these parts of four States, these towns and villages, these people 
3* 



4^ FACTS FOR T«K PEOPLE. 

and territory, these flocks and herds, this slice of the Republic of 
Mexico, two thousand miles long and some hundred broad, — all 
this our President has cut off from its mother empire, and presents 
to us, and declares it is ours till the Senate rejects it! He calls it 
Texas! and the cutting- off iie calls re-annexation! Humboldt 
calls it New Mexico, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Nuevo San Tan- 
der, (now Tamaulipas ;) and the civilized world may qualify tiiis 
re-annexation by the application of some odious and terrible epi- 
thet. Demosthenes advised the people of Athens not to take, but 
to re-take a certain city; and in that re-laid the virtue which saved 
the act from the character of spoliation and robbery. Will it be 
equally potent with us? and will the 're,' prefixed to the annexa- 
tion, legitimate the seizure of two thousand miles of a neig-hbor's 
dominion, v/ith whom we liave treaties of i)eace, and friendship, 
and commerce ? Will it legitimate this seizure, made by virtue 
of a treaty with Texas, when no Texan force — witness the disas- 
trous expeditions to Mier and to Santa Fe — have been seen near 
it without being killed or taken, to the last man ? " 

" I wash my hands of all attempts to dismember the Mexican Re- 
public, by seizing her dominions in JVew Mexico, Chihuahua, 
Coahuila and Tamaulipas. The treaty, in all that relates 

TO THE BOUNDARY OF THE RiO GrANDE, IS AN ACT OF UNPAR- 
ALLELED OUTRAGE ON MeXICO. It IS THE SEIZURE OF TWO 

THOUSAND MILES OF HER TERRITORY, without a v/ord of explana- 
tion with her, and by virtue of a treaty with Texas, to which she 
is no party. Our Secretary of State, in his letter to the United 
States Charge in Mexico, and seven days after the treaty was 
signed, and after the Mexican minister had withdrawn from our 
seat of government, shows full well that he wis conscious of the 
ENORMITY OF THIS OUTRAGE; knew it was war; and proffered 
volunteer apologies to avert the consequences which he knew he 
liad provoked." '^ # ^i= * # 

" By this declaration, the thirty thousand Mexicans in the left 
half of the valley of the Rio del Norte are our citizens, and stand- 
ing, in the language of the President's Message, in a hostile atti- 
tude towards us, and subject to be repelled as invaders. Taos, 
the seat of the custom-house, where our caravans enter their goods, 
is ours ; Santa Fe, the capital of Nev/ Mexico, is ours ; Governor 
Armijo is our Governor, and subject to be tried for treason if he 
does not submit to us ; twenty Mexican towns and villages are 
ours; and their peaceful inhabitants, cultivating their fields and 
tending their flocks, are suddenly converted, by a stroke of the 
President's pen, into American citizens, "or American rebels." 
* # * ^ # ^ * # 

" 1 therefore propose, as an additional resolution, applicable to 
the Rio del Norte boundary 5nly, the one which 1 will read and 
send to the Secretary's table, and on wdiich at the proper time, I 
shall ask the vote of the Senate. This is the resolution : 

Resolved, Thai the incorporaiiov of the left hmrh of thi Rie dd 



FACTS rOh THE PklOPl.K. 4^ 

.Yorle into the American Union, by virtue of a treaty with Texas, 
comprehending, as the said incorporation icould do, a part of the 
Mexican departments of JWw Mexico, Chihuahua, Coahuila and 
Tamanlipas, ivould be an act of direct aggression on Mexico ; 
for all the consequences of vvhich the United States would stand 
responsible." 

After a long and animated discussion, notwithslanding" the 
strenuous efforts of the slave-breeders to prevent such a catastrophe, 
the treaty was rejected by a decisive majority ; and there the mat- 
ter rested with the Government until the next session of Congress, 
which was only five or six months in the future. Every moment 
of this time was occupied with the most incessant and systematic 
drilling by the conspirators. TJeetings were held in various sec- 
tions of the South, in favor of immediate annexation, at which it 
was bravely determined to dissolve the Union, if that measure was 
not speedily accomplished. The following are specimens of 
" democratic " sentiments, given at public political dinners in 
South Carolina. 

•' At Three Mile Creek, Barnwell District, by C. C. Hay : The re^ 
annexation of Texas to the United Statrs: We will obtain it 
'peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must.' 

By Jos. G. W. VV. Ddncan : A just reduction of the tariff; the 
noise of abolition silenced; Texas or disunion; and such legis- 
lation as will in future secure the homestead of every family — 
Polk and Dallas our Presidents. 

At Piedmont, Snmier District, by H. E. L.Peebles : The annex- 
ation of Texas — a measure beneficial to the whole Union, but 
essential to the safety of the South — at the next session of Con- 
gress, we demand Texas or disunion. 

At Jf'alterborovgh. ' Annexation : ' The great measure of deliv- 
erance and liberty to the South ; v/ith it we are Unionists ; ivith- 
ovt it we are disunionists, though the fate of traitors be our doom. 
(Nine times nine cheers.) 

At Orangeburg Court-House, by Gen. D. F. Jamison: The 
Union and Texas, or Texas and disunion —Let the opponents of 
this great American measure accept the alternative. 

By Mr. John Goalson: Texas and South Carolina forever. 

By Lieut. John C. Rowe. The annexation of Texas — peace- 
ably if we can, forcibly if we must." 

Although similar sentiments were as courageously uttered 
throughout the South, we will not. burden the reader by inserting 
more ; but add the testimony of Mr. Benton to this point. 

In a speech of Thomas H. Benton at Boonville, Ky., in 1 844, pub- 



44 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

lished in the Boonville Union, as written out by himself, he pre- 
sented it as " the design of the Texas treaty, not to get Texas 
into the Union, but to get the Southern States out of it; and 
showed that the whole treaty, and all the correspondence relating 
to it, was studiously and artfully contrived for this purpose." 

"To present the acquisition of Texas as Southern, sectional, 
slave-liolding question, wholly directed to the extension, perpetu- 
ation, and predominance of slavery, was its express and avowed 
object." 

" Disunion, as a consequence of non-annexation, was proclaimed 
in hundreds of resolutions. Measures w^ere openly concocted for 
carrying the resolutions into effect. Members of Congress from 
the Southern States were invited to act together; communications 
with the Texan Ministers were recommended to be opened ; all 
the slave States were to be roused and excited ; and to crown the 
scheme, a Hartford Convention, under the pretext of a Southern 
Texas Convention, was proposed to be held at Nashville." 

In a speech, delivered in the Senate of the United States in 
1844, Mr. Benton said : 

" I have often intimated before, but now proclaim it, disunion 
is at the bottom of this long-concealed Texas machination. In- 
trigue and speculation co-operate, but disunion is at the bottom ; 
and I denounce it to the American people." 

We have clearly shown, that the sole object of the slave-holders 
in the acquisition of Texas, (and we shall soon show that they 
never meant to be content with barely getting that,) was, to add 
new securities to their infernal system. As the treaty-making poAver 
had stood in the way of the immediate accomplishment of this 
scheme, the first step taken was, an open, undisguised and suc- 
cessful attempt to over-ride and trample it under foot. Almost 
simultaneously, "Joint Resolves" were introduced into both 
houses of Congress, for the annexation of Texas. Thus doing by 
bare majority, what, if done at all, could only be done constitu- 
tionally, by a vote of two-thirds of the Senate. But is it strange 
that they who make merchandize of their fellow-men, turning them 
into goods and chattels, should be unrestrained by the forms of 
law ? On the 10th of December, 1844, George McDuffie of South 
Carolina, introduced to the Senate joint resolutions for the annexa- 
tion of Texas. 

The day after the introduction of McDuffie's resolution in the 
Senate, on the 11th of December, Mr. Benton of Missouri, v/ho 



facts! for the peopll:. 45 

knew that the adoption of that resolve would involve the country 
in a v/ar with Mexico, and wishing- to avert such a calamity, in- 
troduced his counter project, in the shape of a bill to provide for 
the annexation of Texas to the United States, three sections of 
v.hich are as follows: 

" I. The boundary of the annexed tr^rritory to be in the desert 
prairie west of the Nueces, and along the highlands and moun- 
tain heifl-hts which divide the n-aters of the Mississippi from the 
waters of the Rio del Norte, and to latitude forty-two degrees 
north. 

V. The existence of slavery to be forever prohibited in the 
northern and north-western part of said territory, west of the 100th 
degree of longitude west from Greenwich, so as to divide, as 
equally as may be, the whole of the annexed country between 
slave-holding and non-slave-holding States. 

VL The assent of [Mexico to be obtained by treaty to such an- 
nexation and boundary, or to be dispensed %vith when the Con- 
gress of the United States may deem such assent to be unnec- 
essary." 

But this plan of Benton's v/as altogether too peaceful ; it was 
not aggressive enough. It gave the slave-holders nothing but 
Texas, with the consent of Mexico; while they had long been 
determined to have not only Texas, New Mexico, and California, 
but as much more of that republic as they could get, without her 
consent. War may not have been their primary object; it proba- 
bly was not; but they did not care to avoid it, they rather courted 
it; for they had firmly resolved to take possession of TexRS, and 
as much more of i^Iexico as they wanted, peacefully if slie did not 
resist, but forcibly if she did. The l^lexican Minister had repeat- 
edly warned this government, that the annexation of Texas would 
be regarded by his government as a declaration of war; which 
vras a very v.elcome announcement to the slave-breeders, as fur- 
nishifig a grand pretext for plundering Mexico of her territory. 

Neither did these resolves or this bill go far enough ; nor did 
the treaty. They only provided for the annexation of Texas as a 
territory ; and a territory could not vote ; and slave votes were 
wanted in Congress, as well as more slave territory in the nation ; 
and neither John Tyler ncr McDulHe had made any provisions 
for the votes, nor had Calhoun. And after various modifications 
and amendments had been offered and rejected, Milton Brown of 
Tennessee presented a *' Joint Resolution" in th^ House, which 



46 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

was adopted Jan. 25, 1845, "declaring the terms on which Con- 
gress will admit Texas, as one of the States of this Union ;" the 
first of which is as follows ; 

" Be it resolved, That Con<;fress doth consent that the territory 
properly included with, and rightfully belonging to the Republic 
of Texas, may be erected into a new Stale to be called the State 
of Texas, with a republican form of government to be adopted by 
the people of said Republic, by deputies in convention, assembled 
with the consent of the existing government, in order that the 
same may be admitted as one of the Slates of the Union. 

^^nd be it further resolved, That the foregoing consent of Con- 
gress is given upon the following conditions, aiid with the follow- 
ing guaranties, to wit: 

J. Said State to be formed subject to the adjustment by this 
government o^ all questions ofhoundari) that may arise with other 
governments ; and that the constitution thereof, with the proper 
evidence of its- adoption by the Republic of Texas, shall be trans- 
mitted to the President of the United States, to be laid before 
Congress for its final action, on or before the first day of January, 
1846." 

The Texians, nothing loth, made haste to accept this offer. 
Their ^ republican form of government,'' was already established, 
and the constitution thereof, witii the proper evidence of its adop- 
tion by the people, was all ready to be sent to Congress, to be rati- 
fied by that body as soon as it had come together. To satisfy the 
reader that this instrument was al! that even a slave-holding Con- 
gress could desire, we here give two sections of the 

Texas Co>sTiTUTio?f. 

' Sec. 9. All persons of color, who vv^ere slaves for life previous 
to their emigration to Texas, and who aix now held in bondage, 
shall remain in the like state of servitude, provided the said slave 
shall be the bona fide property of the person so holding said slave as 
aforesaid; Congress shall pass no laws to prohibit emigrants from the 
United States of America from bringing their slaves into the 
Republic ivith them, and holdino;- them by the same tenure by which 
such slaves were held in the United States ; nor shall Congress 
have the power to emancipate his or her slave or slaves ; nor shall 
ami slave-holder be allowed to emancipate his or her slave or slaves, 
loithout the consent of Congress, unless he or she shall send his 
or her slave or slaves without the limits of the republic. No free 
person of African descent, either in whole or m part, shall he. per- 
mitted to reside permanently in the repid>lic, without the consent of 
Congress; and the importation or admission of African negroes 
into this republic, excepting from the United States of America, is 
forever prohibited, and declared to be piranj. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 47 

Sec. 10. All persons, [Africans and the descendanis of Africans^ 
and Indians excepted,) who were residing in Texas on the clay of 
the Declaration of Independence, [a g-reat portion of the native 
Mexican citizens are of course excluded,] shall be considered citi- 
zens of the republic, and entitled to all the privileges of such.' 

Soon after the assembling of Congress in December, 1845, the 
subject of admitting Texas as a State of the Union became the 
absorbing question in the deliberations of that body. Another 
"Joint Resolution for the admission of Texas into the American 
Union," was read on the 16th. Mr. McConnell of Alabama, 
moved the previous question, thus gagging the feeble opposition 
that might have been made, and the resolves were adopted by a 
vote of 141 to 56. They were then sent to the Senate, and adopted 
in that body on the 22d of December, by a vote of 31 to 13. They 
soon received the signature of the President, and this step in the 
proceedings was accomplished. The next waste commemce hos- 
tilities upon Mexico, for the purpose of robbing her of New Mexi- 
co, California, and the adjacent countries ; for as yet, although she 
had withdrawn her Minister from this country, she had made no 
other hostile demonstrations ; not even upon Texas. 

The government of this country, which was forever whining and 
carping about the "grasping ambition of England," had long had 
an " evil eye" towards these possessions of its neighbor, and Cap- 
tain Fremont had already been engaged for several years past on a 
military ^^ exploring expedition " in the upper provinces of Mexico, 
brilliant reports of which he had from time to time communicated 
to Congress.* So that the plan of operations in that quarter was 
doubtless already fully digested. 

To those who are so ignorant of the character of this govern- 
ment as to suppose that the refusal of Mexico to make indemnity 
for spolialions on American commerce was one of the causes of 
the war, it may be necessary to make a few explanations. That 
Mexico had acknowledged the justice of the claims, and wasdoin^ 
the best she could to liquidate them, as fast as they were adjudi- 
cated, until the Americans made war upon her, we have the con- 
fession of both Tyler and Polk. In President Tyler's Message 
of December, 1843, he says: 

" The instalments on the claims recently settled by the Conven^ 

* House Doc. 166, 29lh Congress. 



4S FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE, 

tion with Mexico, have been punctually paid as they have fallen 
due, and our Minister is engag^ed in urging- the establishment of 
a new commission in pursuance of the Convention for the settle- 
ment of unadjusted claims.'^ 

In the annual message of Mr. Polk, of 1845, he says : 

"The interest due on the thirtieth day of April, 1843, and the 
first three of twenty instalments have been paid." 

" The claims which were left undecided by the joint commis- 
sion, amounting to more than $3,000,000, together with other 
claims for spoliations on the property of our citizens, were subse- 
quently presented to the Mexican Government for payment, and 
were so far recognized, that a treaty, providing for their examina- 
tion and settlement by a joint commission, was concluded and 
signed at Mexico, on the twentieth day of November, 1843." 

The reader is requested not to forget, that tliis James K. Polk^ 
who in one breath charges the Mexicans with want of faith in 
refusing to pay their debts, and in the next takes it all back by 
admitting that they do pay them as fast as they are able, — is the 
Y resident o? repudiating Slates ; and that he is the same James 
K. Polk, who, no longer ago than August 8, 1846, vetoed a bill 
for the payment of claims due from the government of the United 
States to many of her citizens, on account of French spoliations. 

The army under General Taylor, which at the commencement 
of the negotiations was located on the Sabine, had long since 
been moved to the extreme frontiers of Texas, and posted at Cor- 
pus Christi on the west bank of the River Nueces, in the state of 
Tamaulipas, where the Texians had established a custom-house. 
There it remained, watching the progress of events, waiting for 
further developements and further orders. During this period it 
was called " the army of occupation^ Although this army had 
actually invaded Mexico by entering Tamaulipas, the Mexicans 
had thus far forborne to make any resistance. 

The following extracts from letters of instruction to General 
Taylor, from the war department, will throw some light on his 
position between the Nueces and the Rio Grande : 

"War Department, July 8, 1845. 
Sir: This department is informed that Mexico has some mili- 
tary establishments on the east side of the Rio Grande, which are, 
and for some time have been, in the actual occupancy of her troops. 
In carrying out the instructions heretofore received, you will be 
carefd to avoid any ads of aggression unless an actual state of war 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 49 

should exist. The Mexican forces at the posts in their possession, 
and which have been so, ivill not he disturbed so lons^ as the rela- 
tions of peace between the United States and Mexico continue. 

Wm. L. Marcy. 
Brig. Gen. Z. Taylor." 

On the 30th of same month, he writes as follows: 

" The Rio Grande is claimed to be the boundary between the 
two countries, and up to this boundary you are to extend your 
protection, only excepting any posts on the eastern side thereof, 
which are in the actual occupancy of Mexican forces, or Mexican 
settlements over which the Republic of Texas did not exercise 
jurisdiction at the period of annexation, or shortly before that 
event." 

We have already stated that the Rio Grande was claimed as 
the western boundary of Texas, and also the fallacy of that claim. 
Here, the Secretary of War plainly admits that the country to 
the east of that river is in the occupancy of the Mexicans. That 
ihey have " posts," "forces," and " settlements " there. And yet 
General Taylor is instructed by the JVar Department, "not to dis- 
turb them." What is this but an admission that this territory be- 
longed to Mexico? It is true that in 1838 the Texan Congress 
resolved that their western boundary was the Rio Grande. Sup- 
pose that the legislature of New York had at the same time re- 
solved that their eastern boundary was the Connecticut river, and 
should send a gang of marauders to Northampton, and another to 
Hartford, for the purpose of taking possession of the country, and 
they should be all captured, hand-cuffed, and marched off to jail ; 
why, according to the logic of certain American Statesmen, that 
would entitle New York to the whole of Vermont, a large portion 
of Massachusetts, and the biggest half of Connecticut. These 
men knew full well that the Rio Grande was not the boundary 
between Texas and Mexico, and they dared not all at once as- 
sume it as such ; else, why suffer those foreign " military estab- 
lishments," to remain unmolested ? 

" If the territory was ours, those would and should have been 
the first and only objects of attack. What! foreign fortresses 
and forces on American soil, and American soldiers ordered by 
an American President not to molest them ! What did this 
mean? It meant that the territory was not ours. ]t meant inva- 
sion, war, and a new conquest, accompanied by the aggravating 
circumstance of pretending that it was peace I " 
4 



50 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

While the American troops were located at Corpus Christr, 
various reports were circulated through the country, of Mexican 
preparations to invade Texas. The following extracts from vari- 
ous official despatches of General Taylor to the war department, 
will enable the reader to set a proper value upon these rumors. 
These letters are all dated at Corpus Christi. 

August 15, 1845, he writes as follows : 

" Nor do I fear that the reported concentration of troops at Mat- 
amoras is for any purpose of invasion." 

August 20j he writes : 

" Caravans of traders arrive occasionally from the Rio Grande, 
but bring no news of importance. They represent that there are 
no regular troops on that river, except at Matamoras, and do not 
seem to be aware of any preparations for a demonstration on this 
bank of the river." 

September 6, he writes : 

" I have the honor to report that a confidential agent despatched 
some days since to Matamoras, has returned, and reports that no 
extraordinary preparations are going forward there." 

October 4, 1845, General Taylor writes : 

" Mexico having as yet made no positive declaration of war, or 
committed any overt act of hostilities, I do not feel at liberty, un- 
der my instructions, particularly those of July 8th, to make a for- 
ward movement to the Rio Grande, without autlsority from the 
War Department." 

October 11, he says: 

" Recent arrivals from the Rio Grande bring no news of a 
different aspect from what I reported in my last." 

January 7, 1846, he writes : 

" A recent scout of volunteers from San Antonio, struck the 
river near Presidio, Rio Grande, and the commander reports every- 
thing quiet in that quarter." 

February 16, he writes : 

" Many reports will doubtless reach the department, giving 
exaggerated accounts of Mexican preparations to resist our ad- 
vance, if not indeed to attempt an invasion of Texas. Such 
reports have been circulated even at this place, and owe their 
origin to personal interests connected with the stay of the army 
here. / trust that they will receive no attention at the War Depart- 
ment.''^ 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 5i 

Here General Taylor himself declares that these reports were 
altogetiier goundless, and cautions the War Department not to 
give them any attention. 

It has already been stateJ, that as soon as Texas was annexed, 
the Mexican minister demanded his passports and returned home. 
The friendiy relations of the two governments having been thus 
interrupted, their diplomatic relations were suspended. Yet Mex- 
ico was still willing to receive a special commissioner to treat 
upon the causes of that suspension; not to settle a ^'boundary 
question " for she had none to settle. Besides, had such a ques- 
tion existed, the United States themselves were not then ready to 
settle it, as we shall presently show. The Rio Grande was not 
the "western boundary" of California, nor the southern; and 
among other regions of the globe, California was to be acquired 
yet. It had been "explored" already.* 

All this time our government was affecting to be very " peace- 
ably inclined," by offering to send a minister to Mexico to nego- 
tiate a settlement of all existing differences ; and although the 
government of that republic had steadily and firmly refused to 
receive any but a special commissioner, on the lOth of November, 
1845, Mr. Polk commissioned John Slidell of Louisiana, as an 
'^' Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico, 
clothed with fall powers to adjust and defnltdy settle all pending 
differences between the two countries, including those of houn- 
dary between Mexico and the State of Teras.^' f 

When Slidell had received his instructions from James K. 
Polk, he took his departure for Mexico. On arriving there, that 
government refused to treat with him, for reasons which have been 
explained. General Taylor, it will be remembered, was at Corpus 
Christi with his "dogs of war," ready to let them slip the moment 
the word of command was given at Washington. As Slidell did 
not succeed in drawing Mexico into a negotiation, either for the 
adjustment of the boundary question, the paymeiit of "claims," or 
the surrender of the Californias, he began to urge upon his 
government a resort to extreme measures. On the 27th of De- 
cember, 1845, he wrote to Mr. Buclianan, Secretary of State, a^ 
5"()llo\vs: 

* St'e Repoit of Captain Fiemont, Doc. 166, 29th CongresLS. 
t Polk's Aimual Message, Dec, 1845. 



S2 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLET, 

" The desire of onr government to secure peace, will be mrif" 
taken for timidity ; the most extravagant pretensions vvill be made 
and insisted upon, until the Mexican people shall be convinced by 
hostile demonstrations, that our differences must be settled promptly^ 
either by negotiation or hy the sword." 

The government was not long in improving upon this hint, for 
m about two v/eeks after the date of this letter, which must iiaver 
been immediately after its receipt, the "hostile demonstrations'' 
were made. On the 13th of Jan., 1846^ General Taylor wa& 
ordered to move forward to the Rio Grande. He accordingly took 
possession of the Mexican custom-house at Brazos Santiago, in- 
vested the tov/n with a military force, fortified Point Isabel, and 
planted his batteries in front of the city of Matamoras. When; 
these preparations were nearly completed, he wrote to the Adju- 
tant General, April 6, 1846, as follows r 

" On our side, a battery for four IS-pounders will be completed;,, 
and the guns placed in battery to-day. These guns bear di7-f,ct!i/ 
upon the public square of Matamoras, and within good range for 
demolishing the town.^^ 

On the 15lh of April, General Taylor informed the department, 
that " no hostile movement had then been made by the Mexicans.''- 
Four days after, an officer in the army wrote to the editor of the 
Philadelphia Spirit of the Times, as follows : 

"Camp OPPOSITE Matamoras, April 19, 1846. 
Our situation here is an extraordinary one. Right in the ene- 
my's country, actually occupying their corn and cotton fields, the 
people of the soil leaving their homes, and we, with a small hand- 
ful of men, marching, with colors flying, and drums beating, right 
ander the very guns of one of their principal cities, displaying the 
star spangled banner, as if in defiance, under their very nose? 
and they, with an army twice our size at least, sit quietly down^ 
and make not the least resistance, — not the first effort to drive 
the invaders off. There is no parallel to it.'- 

The next letter of General Taylor^ is dated April 23, 1846, io; 
which he says r 

" With a view to check the depredations of small parties of 
Mexicans on this side of the river. Lieutenants Dobbin, 3d infan- 
try, and Porter, of the 4th infantry, were authorised by me a few 
days since to scour the country for some miles, with a select 
party of men, and capture or destroy a'ny such parties as ihey^ 
might m£et. It appears that they separated, and that Lieut. Porter, 
at the head of his own detachment, surprised a Mexican campt 
drove away the men, and took possession of their horscs.^^ 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 53 

Now compare the facts with these statements of James K. Polk; 
in his last annual message, in v/hich he says : 

" The existing war with Mexico was neither desired ner pro- 
voked by the United States. On the contrary, all honorable means 
were resorted to, to avert it." 

Fraud and robbery have always been regarded as "honorable 
means," by slave-holders, whenever they wished to coerce submis- 
sion to their demands; and as to "averting" the war, neither 
Polk or the nation ever had any such desire, as all the facts above 
detailed clearly demonstrate. 

" On the 26th April, Gen. Taylor again writes : ' I regret to 
report that a party of dragoons, sent out by me on the 24th instant 
to watch the course of the river above on this bank, became en- 
gaged with a very large force of the enemy, and after a short affair, 
in which some sixteen were killed and wounded, appear to have 
been surrounded and compelled to surrender.' He further adds: 
' HostUilies may noio he considered as commenced.'^ For thus attack- 
ing a superior force of Mexicans without orders, we are informed 
that Captain Thornton, who commanded the dragoons, was arrested 
and tried by a court-martial, and the record of that proceeding 
may now be found in the War Department." * 

As soon as the news of this affair reached Washington, the 
President sent a message to Congress, declaring that a state of 
war existed " hy the act of Mexico.'''' This stupendous lie was im- 
mediately adopted by that body, and entered on its records. On 
the 11th of May, 1846, a bill with a preamble containing this 
brazen falsehood, was adopted in the House, by a vote of 174 to 14. 

"James K. Polk, boasted in his first annual Message, that 
'This accession to our territory has been a bloodless achieve- 
ment. JVo arm of force has been raised to produce the result. The 
SWORD has no part in the victory.'' 
" Now for a bloody commentary ! " 

A few days before the passage of this bill, two battles were 
fought, on the 8th and 9th of May, at Palo Alto and Resaca de la 
Palma, in which the Mexicans were routed with .great slaughter ; 
the Americans murdering them three to one. Not long afterwards 
Matamoras was fired upon hy the batteries on the opposite side of 
the river, and was compelled to surrender to the plundering inva- 
ders. Other towns and cities soon shared a similar fate. Among 

* Speech of J. R. Giddings, H. R., Dec. 1846. 

4* 



54 TACTS TOR THE PEOPLE, 

which was Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico. On taking' 
possession of this place, General Kearney issued a proclamation to 
the inhabitants of this province, absolving them from all allegiance 
to the Government of Mexico, and transferring their allegiance to 
the nation which was sacking their towns and murdering their 
brethren : thus converting them at a dash into American citizens : 
a rare and novel motie of naturalization. As this document is so 
full of cool impudence, and barefaced villany ; and as it throws 
additional light on the desigas of the government, we give some 
extracts : 

" Proclamation. — To the inhahitanis of JStew Mexico, hy Briga- 
dier General S. JV. Kearney, commanding the troops of the Umttd 
States of America.^' 

" As by the act of the Republic of Mexico a state of war exists 
between that government and the United States, and as the un- 
dersigned, at the head of his troops, on the 18th instant, took^'pos- 
session of Santa Fe, the capital of the Department of New Mex- 
ico, he now announces his intention of holding the Department with 
its original boundaries, (on both sides of the Del Norte,) as a pari 
of the Ijniled States, and under the name of the Territory of New 
Mexi(;o." 

"The undersigned has instructions from his government to re- 
quire of those who have left their homes, and taken up arms 
against the United States, to return forthwith to them, or else they 
will be considered as enemies and traitors, subjecting their per- 
sons to punishment, and ^ their property to seizure and confiscation 
for the benefit of ihe public treasury. It is the ivish and intention 
oj the United Slates to provide for JVew Mexico a free governmeht, 
with the least possible delay, similar to those in the United 
States." 

" The undersigned hereby absolves all persons residing vnthin the 
boundary of JVew Mexico, from all further allegiance to the Repub- 
lic of Mexico, and hereby claims them as citizens of the United States. 
Those who remain quiet and peaceable will be considered as good 
citizens, and receive protection. Those Avho are found in arms, 
or instigating others against the United States, will be considered 
as TRAi°TORs, and treated accordingly." 

About the same time Monterey on the Pacific, the capital of 
California, fell a prey to the American squadron under Commodore 
Sloat, who issued a similar proclamation to the inhabitants of that 
region, declaring that if they did not lay down their arms, put 
their necks under the yoke, and consent to be naturalized, they 
would be regarded as traitors, and dealt with accordingly. 

General Taylor had already issued his proclamation, not to a 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 55 

single State however, but to the whole of Mexico, calling on the 
people to forsake their rules, and come under the loving' protection 
of the United States. Some extracts are here given from 

"A Proclamation, — By the General Commanding the Army 
of the United States of America : To the people of Mexico.''^ 

* * " Being disarmed, yoii ivere left defenceless, an easif prey 
to the savage Camanches, who not only destroy your lives and 
property, but drive into a captivity more horrible than death itself, 
your wives and children. It is your military rulers who have re- 
duced yon to this deplorable condition." 

" It is these tyrants, and their corrupt and cruel satellites, gorged 
with the people's treasure, by whom you are thus oppressed and 
impoverished." 

" // is our iL'ish to see you liberated from despots, — to drive hack 
the savage Camanches, — to prevent the renewal of their assaults, 
and to compel them to restore to you from captivity your long lost 
wives and children. Your religion, your altars and churches, the 
property of your churches and citizens, the emblems of your faith and 
its ministers, shall be protected and remain inviolate." 

" We come among ihe people of Mexico as friends and republi- 
can brethren, and all who receive us as such shall be protected, 
whilst all who are seduced into the army of your dictator shall be 
treated as enemies." 

" It is the settled policy of your tyrants to deceive you in regard 
to the policy and character of.our government and people." 

"These tyrants fear the example of our. free institutions, and 
constantly endeavor to misrepresent our purposes, and inspire you 
with hatred for your republican brethren of the American Union." 

" Mexicans we must treat as enemies, and overthrow the tyrants 
who, while tliey have wronged and insulted us, have deprived you 
of your liberty ; but the Mexican people who remain neutral dur- 
ing the contest, shall be protected against their despots by the re- 
publican army of the Union. Z. Taylor, 

Major General U. S. A. Commanding." 

This " proclamation " is full of" honied words and fair speech- 
es." We shall soon see what they -were worth. 

On the 19th of September, the city of Monterey, the capital of 
New Leon, was besieged by a strong force under this same Z. 
Taylor; and after three days of hard fighting, it was taken by 
storm. 

The bloodiest annals of the Old World hardly furnish a par- 
allel to this battle, in comparison with the numbers engaged. The 
carnage was truly frightful. The population of the city was about 
twelve thousand ; large numbers of whom, particularly the fe- 
males, had doubtless remained " neutral during the contest." 
And now for General Taylor's " protection." 



56 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

The Monterey correspondent of the Charleston Mercury says : 

" We are sorry to say, at the close of this ramhling letter, that 
the general of the victorious division, apparently for the sake of 
popularity, sullied his fair fame by neglecting', for some time after 
the capitulation, to restrain the passions of the volunteers. The 
guards were prohibited from sending out patrols to preserve order 
and quiet in the city, and as a matter of course, the foul spirit was 
not Ion? in developing itself. As at Matamoras, MURDER, 
ROBBERY AND RAPE were committed in the broad light of 
day, and as if desirous to signalize themselves at Monterey by 
some new act of atrocity, they burned many of the thatched huts 
of the poor peasants. It is thought that more than one hundred of 
the inhabitants were murdered in cold blood, and one Mexican 
soldier, with Gen. Worth's passport in his pocket, was shot dead 
at noon-day in the main street of the city, by a ruffian from Texas. 
But for the moral influence, and the finally exerted physical force 
of 'the hirelings of government,' the dark deeds of Badajoz would 
liave been repeated in Monterey. Guards of 'mercenaries' are 
now placed in every street, and over every building in the city, to 
prevent depredations being committed by those who come here 
from devotion to the land of tlie free and the home of the brave." 

" The Mexicans themselves, admit that before the arrival of the 
volunteers upon the Rio Grande, all Eastern Mexico was ripe for 
revolt and annexation to the United States. Now there is no por- 
tion of the country so bitterly hostile to us and our institutions. 
We have before us a Monterey paper of July, which reminds the 
disaffected of the atrocities committed at Matamoras, and adds 
that the volunteers, the most unprincipled and ungovernable class 
at home, have been let loose like blood-hounds upon Mexico. We 
fear that very soon there will be kindled a burning hatred towards 
us, which will make the timid Mexicans rally t>om every city, 
village and rancho around the banner of their country, and fight 
with a courage and constancy worthy the descendants of those re- 
nowned heroes who conquered the fairest portion of America." 

There's •' protection " with a vengeance I " As at Matamoras, 
MURDER, ROBBERY, and RAPE, were committed m the broad 
light of day ! " 

For those who might think this statement somewhat exaggerated, 
we give the following as a proof. The army correspondent of the 
New Orleans Picayune, Mr. Haile, writing from near Mier, (Mex- 
ico,) Jan. 4, 1847, says: 

" Below Mier, we met the 2d regiment of Indiana troops, com- 
manded, I believe, by Col. Drake. They encamped near our 
camp, and a portion of them were exceedingly irregular in their 
behavior, firing away their cartridges, and persecuting the Mexi- 
can families at a rancho near by." 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE* 57 

"On arriving at Mier, we learned from indisputable authority, 
that this same regiment had comtnitted the day before outrages 
against the cilizeris of the most disgraceful character ; stealing, 
or rather i-obbing, insulting the women, breaking into houses, and 
other feats of a similar character! VVe have heard of them at 
almost every rancho, up to this place. 

"Gen. Taylor has issued proclamations assuring the inhabitants 
of the towns in the conquered territory that they should be protect- 
ed and well treated by our troops. Since this place has been gar- 
risoned by volunteers, the families have been subjected to all 
kinds of outrages. At Punta Aguda, it has been the same; most 
of those who could go, have left their houses. Some have fallen 
into the hands of the Camanches, whilst flying from the persecu- 
tions of our volunteer troops. Recently the troops here have re- 
ceived treatment from men stationed here, (I do not know who 
commands them,) that negroes in the state of insurrection would 
hardly be guilty of. The women have been rtpeatedlif violated, 
(almost an every-day affair,) houses are broken open, and insults of 
every kind have been offered to those whom we are bound by 
honor to protect. This is nothing more than a statement of facts. 
I have no time to make comments, but 1 desire to have this pub- 
lished, and I have written it under the approval of Capt Thornton, 
Maj. Dix, (who has in charge $-250,000 of the United States 
money,) Capt. De Hart, Col. ^Bohlen, Lt. Thorn, Mr. Blanchard, 
and my own sense of duty, and I am determined, hereafter, to 
notice every serious offence of the above mentioned nature." 

" The American arms shall not be disgraced without the stigma 
falling on the guilty parties, if I can be instrumental in exposing 
them. It would be criminal in me to overlook these outrages, and 
for the national honor, as well as for that of the United States 
Army, I shall not do so." 

The Austin (Texas) Democrat, as quoted by the Boston Post, a 
paper which has always strenuously advocated both annexation 
and ivar, says: 

" David Horsely, in Capt. Chandler's company of Texan volun- 
teers, had been found murdered in an orange grove, and dragged 
to the San .Fuan. ' The news spread like wild-fire among //«?/'* 
men. [Hay's regiment had been disbanded for disorderly con- 
duct.] They determined to take ample vengeance. Wo to the 
Mexican falling in their way ! Gen. VV^orth was made acquainted 
with what was going forward ; he sent his aid to expostulate and besc 
of" the Texans to cease. Infuriated by the cowardly meanness of 
the murderers of their fellow-soldier, THEY SPARED NOT A 
MAN! IT IS THOUGHT EIGHTY OR ONE HUNDRED 
MEXICANS FELL TO AVENGE THE DEATH OF HORSE- 
LY ! ! Terrible retribution ! Gen. Taylor was induced to order 
all disbanded troops, such was the excitement, to leave Monterey 
in forty-eight hours." 



58 FACTS FOR THE PFOPLE. 

[Correspondence of the St. Louis Republican, Sept. 29.] 

Santa Fe, August 12, 1846. 

Since the insurrection consequent upon the murder of our la- 
mented friend, Governor Bent, and other American citizens, the 
atfiirs of the territory have fallen into the greatest confusion. 
That insurrection which arose in the northern district, and princi- 
pally in the valley of Taos, was speedily and effectually Fup- 
pressed. 

Thus far, all was as it should be ; but since, I regret to say, 
nearly the whole territory has been tlie scene of violence, outrage 
and oppression by the volunteer soldiery against all alike, without 
distinction, — the unoffending as well as the offending. 

The parties of volunteers detached to different points on the 
frontier, ivith but very few exceptions, conducted themselves in 
the most insubordinate and oppressive manner, neither respecting 
the rights of property nor persons. 

To redress these wrongs against unoffending citizens, in the 
presence of this licentious soldiery, the civil authorities find them- 
selves utterly powerless; and I add with regret, that the military 
authorities are either incapable of commanding or controlling this 
lawless soldiery, or are entirely indifferent as to the protection of 
the citizens. 

" Verily the Americans must be Christians ; for there is no other 
religion lohich has in itself a fund of redeeming mercy, sufficient for 
the perilous desperateness of their condition.''^ 

The most sunken in infamy, cannot deny that these are 
CRIMES. We will now take a glimpse at some of the HOR- 
RORS of this slave-holding war. 

The Baltimore correspondent of the True Sun gives the follow- 
ing particulars of the attack on Tobasco, by the American squad- 
ron: 

" A great many defenceless females and children were unfor- 
tunately killed by the shells from our guns. An instance or two is 
mentioned. A Mexican had his only daughter, a beautiful girl 
of eighteen years, completely cut in two by a twenty-four pound 
shot, and after laying the mutilated remains on the bed, he rushed 
dovvn to the beach, covered with blood, and implored our men to 
stop firing. In another instance, a whole family were sitting at 
the table, ^^ hen a shell fell among them, instantly exploding, kil- 
ling all the females, besides three servants." 

The following is an extract from a letter addressed to the Louis- 
ville Courier, dated Monterey, Oct. 17, 1847: 

" While I was stationed with our left wing in one of the forts, 
on the evening of the 21st, I saw a Mexican woman busily en- 



FACTS FOR THE PKOPLE. 59 

gaged in carrying bread and water to the wounded men of both 
armies. I saw this ministering angel raise the head of a wounded 
man, give him water and food, and then bind up his ghastly- 
wound with a handkerchief she took from Iier own head. After 
having exhausted her supplies, she went back to her house to get 
more bread and water for others. As she was returning on her 
mission of mercy, to comfort other wounded persons, I heard the 
report of a gun, and saw the poor innocent creature fall dead! I 
think it was an accidental shot that struck her. I would not be 
■willing to believe otherwise. It made me sick at heart, and turn- 
ing from the scene, I involuntarily raised my eyes toward heaven, 
and thought, great God ! is this imr ? Passing the spot the next 
day, I saw her body still lying there, with the bread by her side, 
and the broken gourd, with a few drops of water still in it — em- 
blems of her errand. We buried her, and while we were digging 
her grave, cannon balls flew around us like hail." 

Why the writer should think it was " an accidental shot," that 
struck this " ministering angel," Ave cannot conceive. For she 
was doing precisely what the American people have declared to 
be a crime ivorthy of death — she was giving ''aid and comfort 
to the enemy." 

A young soldier named Wynkoop, of Zanesville, Ohio, who was 
in the fight at Monterey, WTites home to his friends as follows: 

"During the figlit of the second day, a flag of cessation was 
sent to the Mexicans, requesting a few hours to bury the dead 
which were strewed in frightful piles over the field. This was 
refused, and the wounded and dead lay where they fell, beneath 
the rays of a scorching sun till the battle was ended. It was 
then almost impossible for our men to endure the stench, while 
they heaped dirt over the poor fellows where they lay. The bod- 
ies of the dead were as black as coals ; many of them were strip- 
ped of their clothing by the Mexicans during the night. Several 
of those who were wounded during the first day's fight, crawled 
into ditches and holes, to avoid the balls which were rolling like 
hail-stones over the field, whence, exhausted, by the loss of blood, 
they were unable to crawl, or give signs of distress. As a con- 
sequence, many perished, though some who were found in this 
condition were removed, and are recovering." — Zanesville ffliig. 

A volunteer in the Kentucky regiment, (Rowan Hardin,) writing 
to his father, after the battle of Monterey, gives an account of the 
three days' fighting. He says : 

On Monday night the Mexicans were in high spirits. They 
had lost but few men. All night they threw up sky-rockets. At 
night the firing ceased. The left wing of the Kentucky regiment, 
to which I am attached, were marched into the fort taken by us, 



60 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

to hold it daring the night. As we moved in, we were in point 
blank shot of one battery, and raked on our right by another, 
'i'hey both belched fire the whole time we were marching in, a 
distance of one mile. Such a night as I spent that night, I hope 
never to spend again. We had eaten nothing since daylight. 
We had no shelter, no food, no fire. We laid down in the mire 
and blood, among dead men and horses, and a cold rain fell on us 
all night. I had no coat on, having gone into the fight in my 
shirt-sleeves. 

I never heard balls whistle before. Two cannon balls passed 
within two feet of me, and many more within a short distance. 

The dead men were awful sights to look upon, some shot with 
cannon balls, and some with small shot, some with their heads 
shot off, some with their legs off, some with their bowels scattered 
^on the ground. We had no time until yesterday to bury the dead. 
The heavens were filled with carrion birds, and the air with 
stench. I have not time to write at large, — am in fine health, un- 
hurt, without a scratch, for which I am truly thankful." 

A letter from Monterey, from James A. Jackson, a Washington 
volunteer, in the Baltimore Battalion, describing the late battle, 
says: 

"I was almost thirsted to death; and upon casting a disconsolate 
look around me,! saw a poor fellow lying dead close by. I 
stooped down to see if there Avas any water in his canteen, and it 
was full ; I took a drink, and swung the prize to my side. I soon 
passed another poor fellow with both legs carried away ; he had 
been thus wounded ever since morning, and was groaning and 
calling in a very feeble manner for water. I stopped to give him 
a draught, and he emptied my canteen. I had not gone one yard 
from him, before a grape shot came and cut him in tAvo, throwing 
little pieces of flesh and blood all over me." 

Extract of a private letter from an officer of Artillery in our 
army, dated Monterey, Mexico, October 5, 1846, in the New 
York Tribune: 

"I was exposed to a most severe fire on the whole of the 21st, 
and for two or three hours on the 2*2d, and only had one man 
killed at my guns, during which time I fired over fifty rounds 
from each. I am satisfied with glory, if it is to be obtained only 
by butchering my fellow men ; and I wish some of our valorous 
friends at the North could see a little more of the realities of war, 
and they would not be so anxious to rush into one on every trivial 
occasion. It makes me sick now, when I think of the scenes I 
witnessed. They were perfectly horrid. On the night of the 23d, 
as our shells exploded in the city, they were followed by the most 
terrific cries, perhaps from women and children, which did not cease 
till morning. Thank God I I only threw two shells that night, on 



TACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 6J 

account of being told the Texans were on the roofs of the houses 
immediately in my line of fire ; and as I was about to open in the 
mornini^ upon the principal plaza, which was filled with four thou- 
sand troops, 1 was stopped by the appearance of a flag of truce; 
and the result was the capitulation of the city, and a suspension 
of arms for two months; which I hope may terminate in a general 
peace, and that we may be permitted again to see our families." 

Palo Alto — {Cor. Spirit of the Times.) 
# # # « Major Ringgold received a shot, while seated on 
his horse, that carried away the flesh on his legs, from his knees 
up, and passed through the withers of his beautiful thorough-bred 
charger, 'David Branch,' (a frequent winner on the turf.) Capt. 
Page had his lower jaw shot off". The wounds of the men were 
very severe, — most of them requiring amputation of some limb. 
The surgeori's saw was going the live-long night, and the groans of 
the sufferers were heart-rending. Too much praise cannot be given 
to the devotion and prompt action of our medical officers. It was 
a sad duty for them. #####** 

I took advantage of the halt to go over the field of battle. It 
was a truly shocking sight. Our artillery had literally mowed 
them down! There were heaps of dead lying hither and yon, with 
the most ghastly wounds I ever saw, ivhich made one shudder. The 
number of killed could not be accurately ascertained; but of 
killed and wounded, there must liave been at least 800." 



From a letter published in the Herald. 

* * * " At an occasional lull of the war, the shrieks of the 
wounded and dying could be heard, while artillery and cavalry 
horses were rushing madly to and fro, some with broken legs, and 
some in the last agonies of death. * * # # * 

War, while raging in all its fierceness on the field of battle, is 
a soul-stirring and noble excitement; but after that has passed 
away, it is sickening and horrible to think of even, much less to 
be obliged to look upon, its ghastly barbarities. I will not freeze 
your blood by telling you the horrid sights I have seen, the shrieks 
I have heard, while at the same instant one might see a bacchana- 
lian orgie, and hear the shouts of the revellers. I have read many 
accounts of battles, but never a description of one." 

From a correspondent of the Prov. Transcript. 

" Our regiment (4th Infantry) was then ordered forward again 
to support the artillery in a new position which they had taken; 
as we rose the crest of a small ridge, the whole battery of the ene- 
my was fired at the head of our column. I thought for the mo- 
ment that my company, (the leading one,) was all cut down. Capt. 
Page, who, being in command of the division, was then on the 
5 



62 r^CTS FOR THE PEOPLE:. 

right of the line, was struck down with such force as to carry with 
him the three men next behind him ; his whole lower jaw was shot 
away, and the ghastly hideousness of his visage, as he reared up 
in convulsive agony from the grass as we passed him, will not 
soon vanish from my recollection ; another n)an about the centre 
of my company had his head knocked off; the sergeant on my 
right had his musket driven from his hand by a ball which passed 
between me and the man before me ; we were then ordered to re- 
tire out of range from the battery. 

Duncan's battery manoeuvred admirably, and soon began to re- 
turn the compliment with interest. I don't know Anything I have 
ever heard that sounded so sweet to me as the first discharge 
frotn his guns ; for the idea that we had to lie there and take it, 
without being able to strike a blow in our defence, was anything 
but pleasant. 

Our men soon got to laughing and joking, making fun of the 
balls, except when they hit. Some of the balls we could see com- 
ing bounding toward us, which were easily dodged ; but I saw 
several artillery horses killed by them ; others came vvhizzing 
through the air, which we avoided by lying fiat on the ground ; 
others came ripping through the grass, and these told. We had 
been about a quarter of an hour in this position, when the first and 
only shot hit my company. It struck in a little squad of men 
about three feet from me, woundinof five men so that one died that 
night, another had his leg taken off*, a third his hip badly injured, 
and the other two not much hurt, as it just grazed one's head and 
the other's hand, so as to leave its mark. 

We entered the chaparral bush, but before we had gone a 
dozen yards, we came to a little opening, where I saw some of the 
'horrors of war' in the shape of eleven dead Mexicans, every one 
cut and mangled in the most horrible manner that it is possible to 
conceive of a cannon ball's killing a man. They must have been 
all killed instantly. Col. Belknap ordered a hole to be dug, and 
had the bodies tumbled in and filled up. 

We pursued the poor devils about a quarter of a mile, and then, 
to my great relief, the command v/as given for the 8th to halt. 
We then began to look about us, and see how many of us were 
left. The ground all around was covered with Mexicans, and a 
few of our men, and also with horses, some dead, others more or 
less wounded. It was dark by this time, and parties were sent to 
brinsf in the wounded, of either side. They did not have to go far 
for them, — ihey were lying all around us plenty as possible. 

An officer who came in yesterday, told me that they were bury- 
ing the dead. He says he counted eighty bodies that were put 
into one hole, another officer counted thirty-six put in another, and 
when my informant came away, they were digging holes and 
bringing in bodies as fast as possible. The bushes were full of 
them. It is said that out of one of their finest regiments, but 
twenty-six reached Mataraoras." 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE, 63 

A firentleinan connected with the U. S. Army on the Rio Grande, 
in a letter to the Boston Courier, gives the following account of 
the night which followed the recent battle: 

"That night, was to me, a terrible one, which I shall never, 
never forget; the screams and groans of the wounded and dying 
on both sides, mangled and torn as they all were with the grape 
and six-pounder shots; the conflagration of the battle-ground, fit 
emblem of the awful work of deiitl. which has so long been going 
on ; the moans of the poor oxen and horses, so terribly mangled; 
and the dreadful uncertainty of the extent of our loss, and how- 
many of our friends, who were alive at dinner, were then asleep 
forever ; the night-work of our surgeons, with their horrible instru- 
ments, all besmeared with human blood, were sights and sounds 
and thoughts, I pray God, in his mercy, may never visit me with 
again." 

Extract from a letter from an officer of the army, communicated 
to the Albany Evening Journal, dated 

"Fort Brown, May 13, 1845. 

T assure you that this battle of the 9th, will never be forgotten 
by any participant, — a most closely fought and bloody battle. I 
saw a corporal who was by my side kill three men, who appeared 
in the same opening in the thicket, in quick succession ; they liter- 
ally fell dead one upon the other; he then wounded some others, 
rushed out and made prisoners of them ; handed them over, and 
went to work tiring again. This man expended twenty-seven 
cartridges, and I doubt whether he ever missed his aim. The 
balls flew around us like hail, but yet there were only three or 
four men that fell near me ; but after the battle was over, oh! the 
awful spectacle that ground presented ; the wounded and dead 
literally lying in piles, some groaning, others in the last agonies, 
others begging in Spanish for a drop of water, and it was exceed- 
ingly gratifying to see with what alacrity and kindness our sol- 
diers would give them the last drop in their canteens, and assist 
them to the place designated for the wounded. 

I spent some time after the battle in collecting such wounded 
men as I could find ; among them a major who was severely 
wounded, — he asked for water, which I gave him, and one of our 
officers coming up with a little brandy in his canteen, we gave 
iiim a drop; he took my hand, and giving me a grateful look, said, 
' thinks, captain,' which I presume were the Inst words he spoke. 
I saw the poor fellow among the dead on the following day." 

Another writes : 

"There was little sense of a mere personal discomfort, however, 
on a field covered with slaughter, a scene which I trust in heaven 
never to witness again. There lay around me fellow-men, com- 



64 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

rades and antR^jonists, suffering the most horrid anguish ; some 
with an arm off, others with one and some with both legs shattered 
or severed from the body. 

There was one poor fellow, a Mexican, with his belly tore open, 
and a part of his bowels protruded upon the ground; he was still 
alive, and pointed to his mouth for water; but, alas! in vain, for 
we had none to give, not even a drop to cool his tongue. He soon 
after perished, of course." 

An officer of the army writes from Malamoras, under date of 
May 23d : 

" I went over the field after the battle of Resaca de la Palma^ 
and the sight which met my eyes there was one which imagina- 
tion can scarcely depict. Bodies of Mexican soldiers were lying 
about in every direction ; some with their heads entirely or partly 
shot off; others without legs or arms ; others with their entrails 
torn out. One man, a fine looking fellow,' was lying on the ground 
with a cartridge in his fingers, having evidently been killed while 
in the act of priming his musket. I crept about on my hands and 
knees through the chaparral, and at every few paces, I would 
come across dead bodies; and at one spot I discovered the body 
of a beautiful Mexican girl staked through the heart.''^ 

This war, so horrid in its details, has been one of terrible mor- 
tality to the invaders. Colonel Baker, of the Illinois regiment of 
volunteers, in a speech in Congress, as reported in the Boston 
Atlas of Jan. 2, 1847, says: 

" Less than six months ago, Congress had sent into the field as 
many as twenty-six regiments of volunteers, all burning with the 
most exalted hopes, and ready to peril their all, health, reputation, 
life itself, not in a defensive, hut in an invasive imr ; a war not 
undertaken to defend their own homes and f resides, but for the ghin/ 
of the American name and arms. Alas ! how many of these fine 
young men, who had never seen a battle, never had cast their 
stern glance on the countenance of an enemy, were now sleeping 
their last sleep on the banks of the Rio Grande! Once their hearts 
heaved high with a soldier's fondest hopes ; proud and light had 
been their measured footsteps, as they marched in all the buoyancy 
of youthful ambition. But now — 

' Where rolls the rushing Rio Grande, 
How peacefully they sleep ; 
They did not fall in bloody strife, 
Upon a well-fought field. 
Not from the red wound poured their life, 
Where cowering foemen yield. 
Th' archangel's shade was slowly cast 
Upon each polished brow ; 
But, calm and fearless to the last, 
They sleep securely now.' 



TACTS FOR THE TEOPLE. 65 

The bones of nearly two thousand young men, in whose veins 
flowed some of the best blood of this country, were now resting 
in the moiihl on the banks of the Rio Grande, who never had seen 
the face of an enemy, and who never had had the opportunity of 
striking- one manly blow in behalf of their country and their race." 

"Colonel Ballard states, that of the Illinois regiment he took to 
the tield, noi one-Zta//" will return. The rest are tfead Of 2,400 
Ohioans, who left Cincinnati in June, 184G, 900 are no longer in 
their regimenls ; dead, or with ruined constitutions ! 

"The nuiuber of dead, dying or lost, will make about the pro- 
portion of 40 per cent, in one year ! Out of 18.000 volunteers of 
June and July, 1840,7,000 are dead, or gone 1 1 " — Cincinnati 
Chronicle. 

The blackness of the pit can hardly furnish a parallel to the 
wickedness of the people, who are thus wading through carnage 
and blood for the purpose of fastening the yoke of bondage on the 
recks of unbgrn millions of their race. 

In his last annual message, the President said : 

"This war has not been waged with a view to conquest." 

He wouhl doubtless have us believe it has been "waged" "to 
establish justice; and to secure the blessings of liberty to our- 
selves and our posterity." And all this indiscriminate slaughter 
of men, women and children, this storming and bouibarding cities, 
and giving them up a prey to the lusts of the brutal soldiery, who 
committed " rape, robbery, and murder, in the broad light of day,"** 
were the only means for accomplishing so desirable an end. 
Another paragraph from the same message, says : 

"In less than seven months, we have acquired military posses- 
sion of the Mexican Provinces of New Mexico, New Leon, Coa- 
huila, Tamaulipas, and the Californias, a territory larger in extent 
than that embraced in the original thirteen States of the Union." 

Now the President would have us believe that the conquest of 
these provinces was forced upon us ; for he tells us that "all hon- 
orable means were resorted to, to avert it." So he took " posses- 
sion" of them because he could not help it. 

The following letter from the War Department to Col. .T. D. 
Stephenson of New York, taken in connection with the above par- 
agra[)h from the message, the proclamations of Generals Taylor, 
Kearney, Commodore Sloat, and all the facts in the case, will 
illustrate the truth of the statements, that "the war has not been 
5* 



66 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

waged with a view to conquest ; and that all honorable means 
were resorted to, to avert it." The following is the letter : 

" War Department, June 26, 1846. 

Sir, — The President having determined to send a regiment of 
volunteers around Cape Horn to the Pacific, to be employed in 
prosecuting hostilities to some province of Mexico, probably in 
Upper California, has authorized me to say, that if you will organ- 
ize one on the conditions hereinafter specified, and tender its ser- 
vices, it would be accepted. It is proper that it should be done 
with the consent of the Governor of New York. The President 
expects, and indeed requires, that great care should be taken to 
have it composed of suitable persons — I mean of good habits — 
as far as practicable of various pursuits, and such as would he 
likely to remain at the end of the ivar, either in Oregon, or any other 
territory in that region of the Globe, which may then be a part of the 
United States. The act of the 13th of iSIay authorizes the accept- 
ance of volunteers for twelve months, or during the war with Mex- 
ico. The condition of the acceptance, in this case, must be a 
tender of service during the war, and it must be explicitly under- 
stood, that they may be discharged ivilhout a claim for returning 
home ivherever they may he serving at the termination of the war, 
providing it is in the then territory of the United States, or may 
be taken to the nearest and most convenient territory belonging 
to the United States, and there discharged. 

The men must be apprised that their term of service is for the 
war; that they are to be discharged as above specified, and that 
they are to be employed on distant service. It is, however, very 
desirable that it should not he publicly known or proclaimed, that 
they are to go to any particular place. On this point great caution 
is enjoined. 

The communication to the officers and men, must go so far as 
to remove all just grounds of complaint, that they have been de- 
ceived in the nature and the place of the service. 

It is expected that the regiment will be in readiness to embark 
as early as the first of August next ; if practicable, steps will be 
iaimediately taken to provide for transportation. 
Very respectfully, your obedient servant, 

W. L. Marcf, Secretary of War. 

Col. J. D. Stevenson, New York City." 

The following extracts fi'om the Charleston Courier, will throw 
additional light on the object of the Mexican conquest: 

" Besides, every battle fought in Mexico, and every dollar spent 
there, but insures the acquisition of territory wliich must widen 
the field of Southern enterprise and power in the future, and the 
final result will be to re-adjust the whole balance of power in the 
confederacy, so as to give us control over the operations of the 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 67 

government in all time to come. If the South be true to them- 
selves, the day of our depression is gone, and gone forever^ 

" If they succeed in restricting' shivery one inch beloiv the Mis- 
souri compromise, then if we submit to it, we shall deserve our 
degraded destiny. When this issue is tendered us, let the conse- 
quences be what they may, we must meet it as becouies men and 
freemen. It will be no time to argue. Not that we should care 
to reserve acquired territory merely as a habitation for slaves, but 
if they succeed in fixing restrictions against that institution es- 
pecially, it will be a moral degradation and insult to us, which, if 
we bear in peace, will make us the tit subjects of despotism." 

"A combination may be made upon the principle of opposition 
to the Mexican war upon anti-slavery feelings." 

"The first development w^ill be a movement to prohibit the in- 
troduction of slavery into any territory to be acquired in Mexico, 
and then to restore, to a great extent, the high duties that have 
been recently abolished. These two points are well calculated to 
rally the most powerful interests against us, and to give to agita- 
tors and demagogues their brightest prospects of triumph." 

The war has been, and is now, prosecuted as a war of aggir.s- 
sion and conquest. And the Americans are still ploughing up the 
plains of Mexico with the chariot wheels of the war-god, for the 
purpose of planting on its virgin soil the infernal " Upas orchards 
of slavery." To make this still more evident — if the light is not 
already too dazzling — we give some extracts from the debates 
in Congress on the "Wilmot Proviso." The President asked 
Congress to allow him two millions of dollars — as he pretended — 
to make peace with. But really, for the purpose of buying slave 
territory ; as he thought it would come cheaper in the end, than 
fighting for it. So a bill was introduced into that body for this 
purpose. Upon this bill, Mr. Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, offered 
the following amendment, which was adopted in the House; all 
the members from the slave holding States, with Gen. McKay, who 
reported the bill, voting against it, 

^^ Provided, That, as an express and fundamental condition to 
the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico by 
the United States by virtue of any treaty which may be negotiated 
between them, and to the use by the Executive of moneys herein 
appropriated, neither slavtrij or involuntary servitude shall exist in 
an\f part of said territory, except for crime, whereof the party shall 
first be duly convicted." 

The bill, so amended, went to the Senate, where a motion was 
made to strike out this hated proviso. Upon this motion it is said, 



68 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

that " a Northern Senator talked it to death." When Congress 
came together last December, the President, quite as anxious to 
make peace as he had been to avert the ivar, again asked for more 
money for this purpose, but as his desires had somewhat enlarged 
during the recess, he now called for three millions, instead of two- 
A bill was accordingly introduced for this purpose, by Mr. Pres- 
ton King of New York, of which the following is one section : 

" Sec. 2. ^nd be it further enacted, That there shall be neither 
slavery nor involuntary servitude in any territory which shall 
hereafter be acquired by, or be annexed to the United States, other- 
wise than in the punishment of crimes whereof the j^arty shall 
have been duly convicted: Provided always, That any person es- 
caping into the same from whom labor or service is lawfully 
claimed in any one of the United States, sn(;h fugitives may 
be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed out of the territory to the 
persons claiming his or her labor or service." 

Upon this a debate sprung up. Mr. Hillard of Alabama, said: 

" Would the gentleman say he meant to hold all the territory 
we miffht acquire, and to exclude slavery from every part of it .^ 
If he did, he would warn that gentleman, that on that question, 
this Union could only stand on tJwse compromises which he regard- 
ed in their sacred obligation as second only to the Constitution." 

"Gentlemen transceniled the rules which should govern them 
here; if they proceeded, they would rouse a feeling at the South 
that would rend the bonds of this Union as Samson burst the 
withes that bound him. Was this the doctrine that was to be 
acted on, that, acquire what territory we miaht, free labor might 
be suffered to go there, but the mpn of the South should not take 
their slaves with them there? If this thing was to be done, this 
government would be unequal, and its days would be numbered." 

Mr. Dargau of Alabama, spoke on the same subject ; he said : 

" What was he to infer from this ? That it was their purpose 
to hedge round and limit the South, so that all those who were the 
owners of slaves should be compelled to stand just where they 
were now, and never to move a foot in any direction. What 
then, would be their condition twenty or twenty-five years 
hence ? None could know ; but he was not willing to run the risk of 
the consequences of any such arrangement." 

" What would be thought by the volunteers from the South, 
when it was announced to them that slavery was to be excluded 
from the territory their arms had acquired.^ This question must 
be settled before we proceed to acquire more territory, for after- 
wards it will be too late." 

"Mr. D. was not esteemed by his friends a 'hot Southron;' 
on the contrary, he was spoken of by them as rather a cool, con- 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. bv 

siderate man. As a cool man, then, let him tell gentlemen his 
own candid opinion ; unless, in the territory which we might win 
from Mexico, and add to our own, the principles which had settled 
the line of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes, as the compromise 
line between free and slave territory should be permitted to pre- 
vail, this Union must at once sink.''^ 

" Say to the South, that they are only fighting to make FREE 
TERRITORY, that it is only for this that the brave men of Caro- 
lina, Georgia and Alabama are perilling their lives, and they will 
demand the settlement of this question now, preliminary -to any 
further prosecution of the war!" 

'• But if gentlemen were determined to push on, regardless of 
the principles of compromise, and press them to the wall, let them 
take the admonition of one who, in all probability, would never 
address them again, and believe him when he said that if they 
did that Ihey might from that hour date the downfall of this Repub- 
lic:' 

This speech contains ^ frank admission that "the volunteers 
from the South" are fighting for more slave territory, and he asks 
"what they will think" when told, that after all they are not to 
have what they are fighting for. 

Soon after the reading of this bill another was introduced, pro- 
viding a territorial government for Oregon; whereupon the ques- 
tion of excluding slavery from that territory was raised ; and was 
followed by an animated discussion. 

Mr. Toombs of Georgia, said: 

"The South would remain in the Union on a ground of perfect 
equality with the rest of the Union, or they would not stay at all. 
No, the people of the South claimed the right to carry their in- 
stitutions with them wherever they went; into all parts of the Re- 
public ; that they had a right to make their own laws while organ 
ized as territories, and when they became States to choose for 
themselves whether they would have slavery or not. That they 
demanded as their right, and they intended to have it. It was 
only fair play, and there was no use in blinking the question. 
They would be degraded, and unworthy of the name of American 
freemen, could they consent to remain, for a day or an hour, in a 
Union where they must stand on the ground of inferiority, and be 
denied the rights and privileges which were extended to all 
others." 

Mr. Leake of Virginia, said : 

" That if the present attempt to impose limitations with respect to 
the extension of slavery should be persisted in, and should prevail, 
the South must stand in self-defence, for they could not and would 
not submit to it. He went into a review of the Wilmot proviso, 



70 FACTS rOR THE PEOPLE. 

compla'Eed of the North for having thrown a firebrand into the 
House, appealed to their justice and patriotism, and warned them 
to abandon their crusade against the rights of the South, or they 
might see, before long, ' the beginning of the end,' but God only 
could see its termination." 

The bill excluding slavery from the conquered territory passed 
the House by a vote of 115, to 106, and was sent to the Senate. 
Its appearance in that body caused considerable excitement. In 
the debates which followed, Mr. Calhoun of South Carolina, said : 

" Sir, there is no mistaking the signs of the times ; and it is 
high time that the Southern States, the slave-holding States, should 
inquire what is now their relative strength in this Union, and what 
it will be if this determination should be carried into eJEfect here- 
after. Sir, already we are in a minority — I use the word ' we ' 
for brevity sake — already we are in a minority in the other 
House, in the electoral college, and, I may say, in every depart- 
ment of this government, except at present in the Senate of the 
United States ; there for the present we have an equality. Of the 
twenty-eight States, fourteen are non-slave-holding, and fourteen 
are slave-holding, counting Delaware, which is doubtful, as one of 
the non-slave-holding States. But this equality of strength exists 
only in ihe Senate. One of the clerks at my request has furnished 
me with a statement of what is the relative strength of the two 
descriptions of States, in the other House of Congress, and in the 
electoral college. There are 228 representatives, including Iowa, 
which is already represented there. Of these, 138 are from the 
non-slave-holding States, and 90 are from what are called the 
slave States, giving a majority in the aggregate to the former of 
48. In the electoral college there are 168 votes belonging to the 
non-slave-holding States, and 118 to the slave-holding, giving a 
majority of 50 to the non-slave-holding." 

" Now, 1 ask, is there any remedy ? Does the constitution af- 
ford any remedy ? And if not, is there any hope ? These, Mr. 
President, are solemn questions, — not only to us, but, lei me say 
to the gentlemen of the non-slave-holding States, to them. Sir, 
the day that the balance between the two sections of the country, 
the slave- holding States and the non-slave-holding States, is 
destroyed, is a day that will not be far removed from political rev- 
olution, anarchy, civil war, and wide-spread disaster. The bal- 
ance of this system is in the slave-holding States. They are the 
conservative portion, always have been the conservative portion, 
always v/ill be the conservative portion; and with a due balance 
on their part, may, for generations to come, uphold this glorious 
Union of ours. But if this policy should be carried out, if we are 
to be reduced to a handful, if we are to become a mere ball to 
play the presidential game with, to count something in the Balti- 
more caucus, if this is to be the result, wo ! wo ! I say to this 
Union ! " 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 71 

The clause, prohibitintr the establishment of slavery in the con- 
quered territory was struck out of the " three million bill," by the 
Senate, and then sent back to the House, for the purpose of giving 
the slave-holders another opportunity for exorcising the rising- 
spirit of liberty from that body. I'hey soon found " dough-faces" 
enough, whom they so far moulded to their purposes, as to get a 
majority in favor of the bill in its amended form, and it was almost 
immediately adopted. 

What the President has done with the money, remains to be 
seen. Another bloody battle was fought at Buena Vista, between 
the Americans, under Taylor, and the Mexicans, under Santa 
Anna, on the 22d of February, which lasted three days ; and in 
whicli four or five thousand men were murdered, and left welter- 
ing in their blood. 

On the 27th of March, the city of Vera Cruz, with the castle of 
San Juan de Ulloa, surrendered to the combined military and 
naval forces by which they Avere surrounded, after being bom- 
barded four days ; and after the city was nearly laid in ruins. 
More than two hundred and thirty tons of cannon halls and bomb- 
shells, were fired into the dwellings and streets of this devoted 
city. The slaughter was principally among the women and chil- 
dren. The following extracts from the Boston Daily Mail, of 
April 13, 1847, will give the reader some idea of the awful havoc ; 

" On the second day of the bombardment an offer was made to 
surrender the town ; but Gen. Scott M'ould not accept the town 
without the castle, and two days more of bombardment ensued, 
when the soldiers of the garrison, listening to the entreaties 
of the suffering inhabitants, compelled the general commanding to 
surrender both town and castle." 

" The bombardment of four days placed the town in ruins, under 
which great numbers of non-combatants, men, women and chil- 
dren, were buried." 

" 'rhe bombardment is represented to have been terrific, and to 
its thunders succeeded the moans of the dying in every part of the 
town for several days afterwards." 

" The destruction in the city is most awful ; and half of it is 
destroyed. Dwellings are blown to pieces, and furniture scattered 
in every direction ; the streets torn up, and the strongest build- 
ings seriously damaged." 

A correspondent of the Auburn Daily Advertiser, who was one 
of the first to enter the city of Vera Cruz, after its surrender, thus 
describes what he saw : 



72 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE, 

" Never had I beheld such destruction of property. Scarcely a 
house did I pass that did not show some great rent made by the 
burstinir of our bomb-shells. At almost every house at which I 
passed to examine the destruction occasioned by these dreadful 
messengers of death, som« one of the family, (if the house did not 
happen to be deserted,) would come to the door, and inviting me 
to enter, point out their property, and with a pitiful sigh exclaim, 
' La bomba ! La homha ! ' [the bomb ! the bomb !] My heart 
ached for the poor creatures." 

" During my peregrinations, I came to a lofty and noble man- 
sion, in which a terrible boaib had exploded, and laid the whole 
front of the house in ruins. While I was examining the awful 
havoc created, a beautiful girl of some seventeen, came to the 
door and invited me into the house. She pointed to the furniture 
of the mansion, torn into fragments, and the piles of rubbish lying 
around, and in ormed me, with her beautiful eyes filled with tears, 
that the bomb had destroyed her father, mother, brother, and two 
little sisters, and that she was now left in the world alone I O 
war ! war ! who can tell thy horrors ? Who can picture thy de- 
formities ? " 

" During the afternoon I visited the hospital. Here lay upon 
truckle beds the mangled creatures who had been wounded during 
the bombardment. In one corner was a poor, decripit, bed-ridden 
woman, her head white with the sorrows of seventy years. One 
of her withered arms had been blov/n off by a fragment of a shell. 
In another place might be seen mangled creatures of both sexes, 
bruised and disfigured by the falling of their houses, and bursling 
of the shells. On the stone floor lay a child in a complete state 
of nudity, with one of its poor legs cut off just above the knee. 
The apartment was filled with flies, that seemed to delight in the 
agonies of the miserable creatures over whom they hovered, and 
the moans were heart rending." 

" I went about from cot to cot, and attempted to condole with 
the sufferers, by whom I was invariably greeted with a kind smile. 
Not even this abode of wretchedness had been exempt from the 
cursed scourge of war! A bomb had descended through the roof, 
and after landing on the floor, exi)loded, sending some twenty 
already mangled wretches to ' sleep the sleep that knows no wak- 
ing.'" 

Truly, slavery, thou art a frightful monster, when thou canst 
thus butcher the innocent, and fatten the earth with the carcasses 
of the slain, for the purpose of extending and perpetuating thy 
terrible and bloody dominion. 

The following article from General Orders, was published 
with solemn pomp, several days after the surrender. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 73 

'« GENERAL ORDERS, NO. 72. 

Army Head Quarters, | 

Camp Washington, before Vera Cruz, March 28. j 
6. The hihabiiaiits ol Vera Cruz, and their property, are placed 
under the safeguard of every AmericatL^s honor ; and any miscre- 
ant who shall do injury to any persons or property, shall be 
promptly brought before a military commission, under General 
Orders, No. 20. 

By command of Maj. Gen. SCOTT. 
(Signed) H. L. Scott, Asst. Act. Adj. Gen., 29lh March, 
1847." 

Does the reader wish to know what sort of a " safeguard," 
" every American's honor "' will afford to the defenceless Mexi- 
cans, he is referred to the letter from Monterey, published in the 
Charleston Mercury, — the letter of Mr. Haile to the New Or- 
leans Picayune. The article from the Austin Democrat, &c., on 
page 57 of this work, and the following extracts from the New 
Orleans Delta. 

In a letter of Major Coffee to the New Orleans Delta, giving 
an account of the battle of Buena Vista, he says : 

" Some days before the fight, a transaction occurred at Agua 
Nueva, which called down a severe censure from Gen. Taylor. 
One of the Arkansas volunteers was lassooed by the rancheros, 
and dragged to death amongst the prickly pears and thorn- 
bushes; his friends heard of it, went out and slaughtered 18 or 
20 peons, (half-serfs,) totally unarmed. It was certainly un- 
christian like, but they kill us when they meet us to disadvan- 
tage." 

The following extracts from a letter published in the St. Louis 
Republican, detail the particulars of this bloody transaction. 

"Camp of the Army of Agua Nueva, \ 
Mexico, February 13, 1847. j 
Occasional murders of our men have been perpetrated ever 
.since we have been in the country, — all killed by the lasso. 
The Arkansas regiment of horse, from their having been employ- 
ed as scout:-., and occupying the outposts, have been particularl)' 
exposed to this guerilla warfare^ and have lost four or tive of their 
men. The day before yesterday, it was reported that one of 
their number had been killed by the Mexicans, as he had been 
missing from camp since the day before^ when he went out to 
look for his horse." 

" Search was made for the body, and it was found about a 
thousand yards from our camp, with a lasso around the neck, 
6 



74 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

and lied to a prickly pear, having been dragged some three 
hundred yards fiom the chaparral. The Arkansas men vowed 
vengeance deep and sure. Yesterday morning, a number of 
them, some thirty perhaps, went out to the foot of the mountain, 
two miles off, to an ' arroyo,' which is washed in the side of the 
mountain, to which the ' paisano' of Agua Nueva had fled up- 
on our approach, and soon commenced an incUscriniinaie and 
bloody massacre of the poor creatures, who had thus fled to the 
mountains and fastnesses for security. A number of our regi- 
ment being out of camp, I proposed to Col Bissell to mount our 
horses and ride to the scene of carnage, where I knew, from the 
dark insinuations of the night before, that blood was running 
freely. We hastened out as hastily as possible, but owing to the 
thick chaparrals, the work of death was over before we reached 
the horrible scene, and the perpetrators were returning to camp 
glutted with revenge." 

"Let us no longer complain of Mexican barbarity — poor, de- 
graded, ' priest ridden ' as she is. No act of ifihuman cruelty, 
perpetrated by her most desperate robbers can excel the work of yes- 
terday, committed by our soldiery. God knows how many of the 
unarmed peasantry have been sacrificed to atone for the blood 
of poor Colquitt. The Arkansas regiment say not less than 
thirty have been killed, I think, however, at least twenty of 
them have been sent to their eternal rest. I rode through the 
chaparrals, and found a number of their dead bodies, not yet 
cold. The features, in every instance, were composed and tran- 
quil — lying upon their backs, eyes closed, and feet crossed. You 
would have supposed them sleeping, but for the gory stream 
w^hich bedewed the turf around them. In some instances, after 
the vital spark had fled, in the overflow of demoniac vengeance, 
the carbine ball dashed out the brains of its clayey victim.'^ 

" The army condemns the bloody deed, and but through the 
agency of Capt. Coffee, of our regiment, who rallied his men, 
and ste[)ped between the victims and their executioners, seven- 
teen others would certainly have been killed, who were brought by 
him into camp. 

And what punishment was inflicted upon the perpetrators of 
' this indiscriminate and bloody massacre ? ' Why, they have been 
blamed by Gen. Taylor ! 

We gather the following from the Boston Times of May 11, 
1847 : 

'' By a letter f-om Gen. Taylor of the 4th April, it appears that 
a partv of Americans, under Col. Mitchell's command, the 1st 
Ohio U. S. Dragoons, and Texas Rangers, made prisoners of 
twenty-four Mexicans at Guellapea, gave tJiem a mock trial by 
night, and then shot them, through the head ! " 

We pity those who are compelled to place themselves under 
such a " safeguard '" for protection, either in their persons or their 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 75 

property. And bitter experience has taught the poor Mexicans, 
that it has been thus far no better than that aflbrdecl to sheep, by 
a pack of hungiy wolves. And many disgraceful outrages are 
already reported to have been con:imitted upon the defenceless 
inhabitants of Vera Cruz by their new guardians, whose only 
bond is their " honor." 

As General Scott has actually inflicted punishment upon 
^'■several " Americans for outrages upon " the unoffending inhab- 
itants of the country," we cheerfully make room for his own ac- 
count of the matter. In imitation of General Taylor, and other 
American commanders, on the 11th of April, General Scott issued 
a proclamation " to the good People of 3Iexico,^^ assuring them, 
among other things, that ^^ Americans are not their enemies^^^ — 
in which he says : 

"For the Church of Mexico, the unoffending inhabitants of 
the country and their property, 1 have from the first, done every- 
thing in my power to place them under the safeguard of martial 
law against the few bad men in this army." 

"My orders, to that effect, known to all, are precise and rig- 
orous. Under iheni, several Americans have already been pun- 
ished by fine, for the benefit of Mexicans, besides imprisonment; 
and one. for a rape, has been hung by the neck." 
In the next paragraph he triumphantly asks : 
" Is this not a proof of good faith and energetic discipline! " 
But alas ! for both his " good faith and energetic discipline," 
it turns out, as we learn from the Vera Cruz Eagle of April 15th, 
that the one who has been hung was a colored man by the name 
of Kirk. Had he been white he would have done what he did, 
with entire impunity. And we have yet to learn that a single 
one of the hundreds of white '• miscreants," who are guilty of 
the same thing, have been punished at all. But this man was 
not a soldier, as his color was a legal bar to his enlistment. He 
was only a camp follower. Nor is it that the commission of rape, 
at the present day, by the Americans, either in Mexico, or on 
their own plantations, is a crime, per se, that poor Kirk was exe- 
cuted. His crime consisted in not being of the right complexion 
rather than the rape ; and it was for assuming the prerogatives of 
a white American, and doing what they alone, claim the right 
to do, that he was "hung by the neck." All these professions 
of friendship, are a sham and a cheat; as such professions from 
such men ever must be. After having murdered them by thou- 



76 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

sands, pillaged, and destroyed scores of iheir cilies, towns and 
villages, conamitted upon their families " all kinds of outrages," 
and robbed them of more than half their entire country, the 
captain of this gang of freebooters, pausing for a moment in his 
work of carnage and plunder, seizes a poor black maiij harigs him 
by the neck for venturing to exercise the privileges of a white man, 
and then very coolly tells the Mexicans, that " Americans are 
not their enemies ! ^"' and that he has "done everything in his 
pov.'er " to protect both them and their property; and trium- 
phantly points them to this hanging as a proof. 

As additional evidence of what was stated in the outset, 
that the design of the government, in making this war, was^con- 
quest, and conquest too for the basest of all purposes, the attention 
of the reader is called to the following paragraph from the Presi- 
dent's last annual message : "^ 

" It may be proper to provide for the security of these impor- 
tant conquests by making an appropriation for the purpose of 
erecting fortifications and defraying the expenses necessarily 
incident to the maintenance of our possession and authority over 

Now if the President only wanted to drive invaders out of 
Texas — who were never in it — and to make Mexico pay her 
debts, what did he mean by calling upon Congress to erect forti- 
fications for " securing our possession and authority " over 
" these important conquests ? " Did he mean to yield these 
" conquests," fortifications and all, as soon as the invaders were 
driven off, and Mexico had paid her debts'? He meant no such 
thing. He meant, and so did the nation, to conquer Mexico and 
swallow her up, for having committed the unpardonable sin of 
abolishing slavery. And after overrunning two-thirds of her 
territory with incarnate devils, mad with whiskey, madder for 
the extension of slavery, and satiating their lusts, and glutting 
their love of plunder with the " beauty and booty "' of Matamoras, 
Monterey, and multitudes of other places, the President sent 
Senor Atocha, a renegade Mexican, to that government with the 
modest offer to pay them about the valuation of the town of New 
Bedrord,^^ Mass., for three quarters of the entire Republic of Mexico, 
for the purpose of seeking, in her refusal to sell herself, an occa- 

« December, 1846. f Fifteen milJions of doHass. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 77 

sion for further aggression. IMexico lefused of course, as every- 
body well knew she would, and Scotl, at the head of the invad- 
ers, was sent to finish the work of conquest. From the city of 
Vera Cruz he maiched upon the capital. He met the Mexican 
army, under Santa Anna, at Cerro Gonlo, and a bailie ensued 
on the 18lh of April, in which 431 Americans, and more than 
1,000 Mexicans were maimed and murdered. 

From the butchering of Cerro Gordo, the Americans pushed 
towards the capital of Mexico; taking possession of, and plun- 
dering in rapid succession, Jalapa, Perote, and the large city of 
Puebla, containing a population of about sixty thousand. Here 
they remained until the early part of August, when, being rein- 
forced by five thousand men, they urged their way towards the 
" Halls of the Montezumas." On the 19lh and 20th, they en- 
countered " the enemy " at Contreras and Churubusco, and after 
two days of hard fighting were again victorious. Here an armis- 
tice was agreed upon, which, however, lasted but a few days, as 
each party accused the other of violating its provisions. 

Hostilities were recommenced on the 7th of September, and 
the sanguinary battle of El Molino del Rey was fought on the 
succeeding day, in which 789 Americans, and about 3.000 Mex- 
icans were mangled and slain. The legalized banditti from the 
Uniled States, were now in the immediate neighborhood of the 
far-famed Mexican capital. The prize was just within their 
grasp ; and they fought with the desperation of tigers for their 
prey. Post after post, and fortress after fortress yielded to their 
prowess. The storming of the castle of Chapultepec on the 11th 
of September, was one of the most ferocious fights on record. 
The contest was continued for several days; and after a desper- 
ate struggle, in which numerous forts and batteries were taken 
by storm, the Mexican army retreated ; and on the 14th of Sep- 
tember, 1847, the city of Mexico was surrendered into the hands 
of the invaders. 

As it does not enter into the design of this work to follow out 
in detail the operations of the American armies in Mexico, any 
farther than is essential to a right understanding of the relative 
position of the two nations, and the objects and designs of the 
United States in waging the war, we pass over the various bat- 
tles, guerrilla fights and skirmishes which succeeded the cap- 
6* 



78 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

ture of the city of Mexico, and come to the negotiations on the 
subject of peace. 

During the few days of arnnistice, between the battles of Chn- 
rubusco and Moliiio del Rey, Nicholas P. Trist, a commissioner 
appointed by the United States to accompany Gen. Scott, and 
hold the " olive branch " while he slew with the sword, opened 
a correspondence with Don Pacheco, " Minister of Relations of 
the Mexican Republic," with the view of establishing a treaty 
of peace between the two nations. The proposition, submitted 
by Mr. Trist, through rather more modest than that of Senor 
Atochd's, went to the extent of taking on the behalf of the United 
States, the Californias and the whole of New Mexico. These 
negotiations came to nothing; and Trist was recalled. Before 
his return, however, with the assistance of Scott, he succeeded 
in negotiating a treaty w'lih the Mexican government, and for- 
warded a copy to Washington. After striking out several arti- 
cles, and inserting others, it was ratified by the Senate of the 
United Stales, on the 10th of March, 1848, and then sent back, 
with the amendments, to again undergo the action of the Mexi- 
can government. 

The portion of the fifth article defining the boundaries, is as 
follows : 

" The boundary line between the two republics shall commence 
in the Gulf of Mexico, three leagues from land, opposite the moulh 
of the Rio Grande, otherwise called Rio Bravo del Norte, or oppo- 
site the mouth of its deepest branch, if it should have more than 
one branch emptying directly into the sea ; from thence up the 
middle of that river, followin;: the deepest channel, where it has 
mure than one, to the point where it sti ikes the southern bound- 
ary of New Mexico ; thence westwardly, along the whole south- 
ern boundary of New Mexico, (which runs north of the town 
called Passo,) to its western termination ; thence northward, 
along the western line of New Mexico, until it intersects the first 
branch of the river Gila ; (or if it should not intersect any branch 
of that river, then to the point on the said line nearest to such 
branch, and thence in a direct line to the same;) thence down 
the middle of the said branch and of the said river, until it em{)- 
ties into the Rio Colorado; thence across the Rio Colorado, fol- 
lowing the division line between Upper and Lower California, to 
the Pacific Ocean."'' 

Whether the amended treaty is ratified by Mexico or not, it is 
evidently the design of the American government to hold all the 



yACTS FOR THE PEOPLE, '7%- 

territory acquired by it to the United States ; so ttiat slavery has 
ah-eady obtained territoiy over v;hich to stalk without let or 
hindrance for centuries to come. 

The Annericans are still pursuing the v/ork of conquest, with 
appetites sharpened by plunder, and lusts inflamed with blood. 

Were they fighting in a good cause, were they battling in de- 
fence of their hearth-stones and family altars, which had been 
invaded by a cruel foe, they never would have disgraced their 
cause, by committing atrocities so revolting to humanity, as 
those perpetrated by the American soldiers upon the unarmed 
Mexican peasants aad their defenceless families. But as we 
tiave fairly demonstrated, that the cause in which they are fight- 
ing is the blackest under heaven, it follows that the most de- 
praved and wicked of our race are fightitig it. Good men never 
fight in a bad cause ; and good men are not fighting in this. On 
the contrary, the nation has vomited up from the kennels and 
sinks of pollution, the lowest moral forms of human life, embrac- 
ing both the dregs and scum of society, and sent it forth a burn- 
ing lava-flood of desolation, wasting and destroying the country 
of our Mexican brothers, — • but recently consecrated to universal 
liberty. 

There has been much said since the commencement of this 
war calculated to excite the prejudices of the ignorant against 
the Mexicans. They have been represented as a race of semi- 
barbarians, ignorant of everything that can ennoble and bless 
our race. For the purpose ef stemming this tide of bitter pre- 
judice, we here insert an extract from the recently published 
w^ork ot Mr. Thompson, late American Minister to Mexico. He 
says : 

" On the 16lh of June, 1842. the Texan prisoners of the Santa 
Fe expedition were released by General Santa Anna, that being 
bis birth-day, or rather the anniversary of his saint, (Saint Anto- 
nio,) which is the day kept by all Mexicans instead of their own 
birth-day. I knew that they were to be released on that day, 
on the parade ground near the city, and fearing that the im- 
mense populace which would be assembled might offer them 
«ome violence, I went out, knowing that ray official station would 
protect me, and might enable me to protect them. Never was 
fear more groundless, or a surprise more agreeable. Santa An- 
na reviewed on that occasion a body of more than ten thousand 
troops; and there were not less than thirty or forty thousand 
ether persons assembled in the field. Wlien the order for their 



8Gf FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

liberation was given, it was received with acclamaiions and 
shouts by the Mexican troops, which extended through the 
whole va:jl concourse. The otficers and others threw pieces of 
money to the Texans. and as they passed through the ciowd, 
instead of jeers and insults, every Mexican had a\vord of kind- 
ness for them, running up to them and shaking hands, and ex- 
claiming, ' amigo, amigo ' — my friend, my friend I I saw one 
poor lepero pull off his blanket and offer it to a Texan who was 
rather more ragged than he was himself. As they passed along 
the streets, men and women would run out from their shops and 
offer them bread and other articles. Let it be remembered that 
these men had invaded their country, and that they had been sedu- 
lously taught to regard them as their born enemies ; los Texa- 
nos (the Texan?) having all the associations with a Mexican that 
the words los Moros (the Moors) had with their Gothic ancestors. 
1 could not refrain from asking myself whether, if the people of 
any other country had invaded ours and been made prisoners, 
they would under like circumstances have passed through such a 
crowd not only without insult, but with such demonstrations of 
kindness and sympathy." 

" An incident occurred while the prisoners were confined in 
Tacubaya, which is characteristic, not only of the Mexicans of 
both sexes, but of women everywhere. On one occasion, and it 
was one of the very first exceptions to the remark which I have 
just made, a subaltern Mexican oificer struck a Texan who was 
at work on the streets; a young lady of one of the most respect- 
able families, and I sincerely regret that I have forgotten her 
name, who happened to be passing by, called the officer to her^ 
and asked him if he was a Mexican by birth. He replied that he 
was not. She said, 'I am rejoiced to hear it, sir, and I did not 
suppose that you were, for I did not believe that any Mexican 
would be guilty of so cowardly an act as to strike a prisoner who 
dare not return the blow." 

We also give some further favorable notices, which seem to 
have been extorted from their authors. 

From the Boston Daily Mail. 

" Noble Conduct. — A correspondent of a cotempbrary, writ- 
ing from Vera Cruz, gives the following account of an incident, 
of a character which we love to record. ' Our blockading squad- 
ron are daily capturing prizes. I cannot forbear mentioning a 
circumstance which is alike honorable to the Mexicans and our 
officers, which robs war of some of its sterner and more repulsive 
features. When hostilities were opened, and the blockade an- 
nounced, Gen. Bravo, in opposition to the advice of a council 
of his officers, permitted all the American vessels in port to de- 
part without molestation, and allowed them eight days to close 
up their concerns before leaving. Yesterday, the Somers and 



FACTS FOR THE FEOi'LE. 81 

the Falmouth each captured a valuable prize, under the Mexi- 
can flag. A colonel of the army was passenger in one of thenu 
Caplain Gregory, commamling the squadron, deemed this a suit- 
able opportunity to acknowledge the courtesy of the Mexican 
General. He, therefore, released both of the prizes, and des- 
patched a graceful and appropiiaie note to Gen. Bravo, inform- 
ing him that he had been told of his liberal conduct towards our 
vessels, and as an act of such generous magnanimity could not 
be permitted to pass unnolicetl by an American officer, that we 
had the honor of returning to him the two vessels which had be- 
come lav^'ftil prizes to our squadron. I need not say that all the 
squadron cordially acquiesced in this timely reciprocation of the 
forbearance and honorable conduct of the Mexicans.' '' 

From the Nevj York Journal of Commerce. 
MEXICO. 

" There are three encouraging facts concerning the Mexicans 
stated by our late Minister, Mr. Thompson, viz.: The good 
-character of the v/omen, the general temperance of the people, 
and the ability of nearly all of them to read and write. The 
women, (he observes,) in their manners are perfect, and in the 
great attributes of the heart, affection, kindness, and benevo- 
lence, in all their fortns, they have no superiors. He thinks that 
in the most important point they have been much slandered ; and 
there is no city in Europe of the same size, where there is less 
immorality than in Mexico." 

•' ' I am sure,' he says, ' that during my residence in Mexico, 
I did not see a dozen men drunk, and I have seen assemblies of 
fifty and a hundred thousand people without one case of drunk- 
enness. As to intemperance among respectable people, it is 
almost unknown.^ Again, '1 had not a servant during my resi- 
dence in Mexico who did not read and write — neither very 
well, it is true, but quite as well or better than the same class 
in this country. I often observed the most raijged leppers. as 
they walked down the streets, reading the signs over the store 
doors. How this happens, I knov/ not, unless it be the effect of 
the Lancasterian schools which are established all over the coun- 
try.' " 

A correspondent of the New Orleans Delta, giving an account 
^f the battle of Monterey, says : 

'' During the progress of the seige of Monterey, there were 
<3on?tant and affecting evidences of the kindness the Mexican 
women afforded to the soldiers of the American army, to the regu- 
lars as well as volunteers. When our men and officers were 
passing through the streets of the city, during the most exciting 
intervals of the battle, they would run out of Uieir houses with 
i3askets filled with br«ad and cakes of diffejent kinds, and dis- 



SS" FACTS FOR THE PEOPL^o. 

tdbute the contents amongst the officers and soldiers, without th^ 
reception of fee or reward for their kindness. And it can b© 
easily imagined that these were highly acceptable donalionsy 
inasmuch as many of us at the lime were very mach reduced in 
our stock of provisions. There were also naany of us, during the 
seige and af'er we had entered the city, placed in different yard& 
in the place, where we fired from the tops of the houses upon 
the Mexican troops, who were stationed in the public squares or 
plazas." 

" Here, too, our toils and lassitudes were greatly soothed by 
the tender assiduities of the Mexican females. There were some 
of them still remaining in the houses which backed upon these 
yards, who cheerfully tendered their services to cook for us, re- 
ceiving a small amount of compensation from those who had 
money, and to those who were destitute of means, handing food 
without any reward whatever." 

" The humanity of the Mexican women was also brightly 
manifested during the most intense heat of the action, in caus- 
ing the wounded among the American soldiers to be removed 
out of the streets, where they laid welterinjj in their blood, into 
their houses, where they carefully anil tenderly dressed their 
Vvounds, and provided them with food and drink. They also 
evinced the most ardent devotion to such of the wounded sol- 
diers on the American side as were taken prisoners by the Mex- 
icans, and sent to iheir hospital. They dressed their wounds, 
washed their clothes, and brouyht them fruit of different kinds, 
without any charge for their pains." 

The Mexicans-, then^ are not wild beasts, but men, brother 
men ; whom we are bound by every principle of justice, human- 
ity, and religion, to love and protect, rather than to hate and 
destroy. And would the limJts and designs of this work permit^ 
we would show that in temperance, humanity, and national jus- 
tice, they are far superior to the nation which is now grinding 
them to powder. But we forbear. An impartial future is yet to 
sit in judgment on the character of this nation, which in regard 
to its privileges, has been exalted to heaven, but which, by il&. 
eiimes and oppressions, has thrust itself down to hell. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE, 



We, the people of the United States, in order to establish jus- 
tice, and secure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our 
posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution. — Preamble 
io ConslUutiGn of the United States. 

The United States — twelve out of the thirteen slave-hold- 
ing — entered on their career as a ration bound by a compact, 
not to prohibit the foreign slave-trade until the honrie market 
could be supplied by the domestic : — to give up the soil of the 
whole country as hunting-ground upon vi^hich the slave-holders 
might chase down the flying bondman : — to allow a represen- 
tation in Congress based upon three-fifths of all the slaves in the 
land, and to aid the master, by bullet and bayonet if need be, to 
keep his slaves in subjection.* 

With such a beginning, strange that any should fail of seeing 
the end. Having thus received the bantling under its protection, 
the next business of the government was, to provide for its future 
v/ants. Slavery has shared largely in its provisions, and fattened 
on its bounties, until the little one has become a giant, whose 
tread shakes the nation. Before it, the questions of Peace and 
War, Banks, Tariffs, and Sub-Treasuries, are as the small dust 
of the balance. 

The Constitution had hardly been ratified by the people, and 
the government gone into operation under it, when Congress be- 
gan to legislate, and the President and Senate to make treaties 
for the better security of slavery. The fathers of the republic 
had fought through a seven years' war with Great Britain, be- 
cause, as they declared, " God had created all men equal;'* 
and after having wiped the blood and dust of this battle in be- 
half of I/t6erii/ from their brows, they sat down in their legisla- 

*See Art. I., Sec. 2 and 9, and Art. IV., Sec. 2 aad 4, Con. U, S. 



i'4 TACTS FOR THE PEOPLE^ 

live capacity, and commenced, on a large scale, the business oi 
forging manacles for the limbs of slaves. 

Some of the methods in which the powers of the Federal 
Government have been employed for this purpose, will aov^ be 
mentioned. 



INDIAN HELATIONS. 

"On the 7th August, 1790, the United States concluded a 
treaty with the Creek Indians, in which they distinctly agreed to 
deliver up the negroes then residing within their territory, to the 
officers of the United States • and if not delivered on or before the 
first day of June following the date of the treaty, the Governor 
of Georgia was authorized to appoint three persons to repair to the 
Indian country to demand them»" 

" For this and other stipulations on the part of the Indians, the 
United States agreed to pay them an annuity of fifteen hundred 
dollars, together with certain goods mentioned in the treaty." * 

Many of these slaves had run away from their masters, while 
they were fighting for their liberty ; and having obtained that, 
after a long and severe struggle, they turned their attention to 
the very laudable undertaking of reducing them to bondage 
again. 

" But the Indians neglected to deliver the negroes ; and on 
the 31st December, 1795, the Secretary of War communicated to 
the President the fact, that the Indians had disregarded their 
compact, and advised that the slaves be paid for by the United 
Stales, t 

This communication vras sent to the Senate and House of Rep- 
resentatives by the President on the 12lh January foUov/ing, but 
no final action appears to have taken place at that time.l On 
the 29th of June, 1796, another treaty was entered into between 
the United States and the Creek Indians, called 'the treaty of 
Coleraine/ By the terms of this latter treaty, the Indians again 
covenanted to deliver up to the officers of the United States, 
such negroes as were resident in their nation; and if they were 
not delivered by the first day of January next following the date 
of the treaty, then the Governor of Georgia was authorized to ap- 
point three persons to repair to the Creek nation and demand sai<l 

*Laws of the United States, 1 vol., 359. — 6th American State Papers, 
81. 

t 5 American State Papers, 546. 

i American State PaperSj vol. 5, page 546. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 85 

negroes under direction of the President of the Uiiited States* In 
consideration of this and other stipulations, the United States 
covenanted to pay the Indians six thousand dollars in goods, and 
to furnish them with two blacksmiths and strikers, tools, &c. 
It should also be understood, that at the conclusion of this treat}', 
many of the slaves from the ' Upper Creek Towns ' were brought 
in, and delivered to the officers of government, who acted with 
the Indians as the assistant catchpolls of Southern slave- 
holders." t 

" The slaves of Georgia, however, continued to flee from 
bondage, and to seek an asylum among the Indians ; and many 
who had left prior to the treaty of 1790, remained in the Indian 
country, intermarried with the Seminole?, or ' Southern Creeks,' 
and became permanently incorporated with various bands known 
as the ' Florida Indians.' " | 

'' The people and government of Georgia were constantly 
making efforts to get the United Slates to obtain a return of the 
slaves who were living with the Indians ; but these efforts proved 
of little use, as the Indians neglected to restore any of them.^ 
In 1802, a general law regulating intercourse between the peo- 
ple of the United Slates and the Indian tribes, was enacted by 
Congress. By the terms of this law, tlie agent for paying annu- 
ities was authorized to retain from the annuities of any tribe, the 
value of any property taken from ihe white people by Indians 
belonging to such tribe. |! Under this law, it is said, that a com- 
pensation was retained by the agent of the United States, for all 
slaves who left their masters, and went to unite with the Indians, 
subsequent to the passage thereof. On this point the writer 
speaks from verbal information, and not from official documents. 
It is, however, certain, that the people of Georgia could neither 
get the negroes who had left their masters prior to the passage 
of the law, nor could they obtain compensation for their loss. 
They therefore became importunate in their demands upon the 
Federal Government, to interfere more effectually for the protec- 
tion of slavery in that State. The Executive Anally determined to 
make another effort to aid the slave-holders of Georgia in obtaining 
their slaves, or to extort from the Indians a comj)ensation for 
their loss.^ To effect this object, arrangements were made by 
the Executive of the United States and the Executive of Geor- 
gia, for negotiating another treaty with the Indians; ai the mak- 
ing of which, the State of Georgia should be represented by her 
authorized agents, in order that the claims of her slave-holders 
should be duly regarded.** Instructions were given to ihe com- 

* American State Papers, vol. 5, page 586. Laws U. S., vol. 1, page 363. 
t Vide 6 vol. American State Papers, pa^e 252. 
X House Doc. 271, Ist Ses., 24th Congress. 
§5 American State Papers, 249. 
. II Laws U. S., 2 vol., 360. 

ire American State Papers, 248, 257. ** Ibid., p. 254, 
7 



86 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

mi.-sioners, who negotiated the treaty on the part of the United 
States, to lend to the aijenis of Geoigia every aid that might tend 
to effect the objeci of their mission. " * 

"The conatiiissioners on the part of the United States, and 
those on the part of Georgia, met \he chiefs, warriors and liead 
men of the Creeks, at ' Indian Spring,' about the 25ih Decem- 
ber, 1821, Ou the 27th, the commissioners of Georgia delivered 
their talk to the Indians, in which they assured the Indians, that 
'in order to keep the chain of frienihhi'p bright between the white and 
red people, it was necessary that they should do justice to each 
OTHER.' They then reminded the Indians of their stipulation to 
return negroes, contained in the treaties of New York and Cole- 
raine, and delivered to the Indians a list of their claims. | The 
next day, Gen. Mcintosh principal chief, replied, that 'he did 
not know that he was called here to answer for the claims of 
Georgia, until they had received the talk of the commissioners 
yesterday, — that most of the items he knew nothing about. ^ 
That Gen. McGilvery, who negotiated the treaty of New York 
more than thirty years before, when he returned, informed their 
people that they were to deliver up the negroes then in the nation ; 
but they were not to be liable for any that were dead or removed. 
That many of them were collected at the time of the treaty of 
Coleraine, and delivered to the agent of the United States. That 
others were subsequently delivered to Col. Hawkins, who never 
mentioned to them any claim under the treaty of Coleraine, but 
mentioned that of New York. That many of the negroes had 
been carried away by the British at the close of the war, that in 
1816, many of these negroes were in the fort on the Apalachicola 
river; that most of them were killed, and those that were not 
killed were delivered to Colonel Clinch, — and many of the ne- 
groes had gone into Florida among the Seminoles. That he had 
himself, with his warriors, joined Gen. Jackson's army, and gone 
with them inio Florida, where they took some of those negroes, 
and delivered them to the agent of the United States ; and that 
others still remained among the Seminoles. That if the Presi- 
dent admitted that country to belong to the Creeks, he would 
take his warriors and go and bring up as many as they could get, 
and deliver them up to the United Slates. He thought the 
Creeks had fairly complied with their treaties in good faith. ''$ 

" In reply to this, the commissioners of Georgia insisted that 
the Indians ought to pay for the neijroes carried away by the 
British at the close of the war, and for those among the Semi- 
noles, ' and for the increase of all that had taken up their residence 
among the Indians.'' This demand was rejected by the Imtians. 
It was, however, asfreed to refer all the claims of (jeorgia aijaiiist 
the Indians to the President,^ and a stipulation was made in the 

* 6 American State Papers, 250. t Ibid., p. 251. t T^id-, 262. § Ibid., 
p. 256. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 8T 

treaty, by which the United States were to hold $250,000 dne 
from the United States to the Indians, in trust for the payment of 
such claims as the President should regard just and proper.^ 
The President took upon himself the discharge of thus estimating 
the value of the slaves, and the propriety of paying for their in- 
crease. Commissioners vi^ere appointed for that purpose, who, 
after full examination, estimated the amount that should be paid 
to the slave-holders of Georgia, in full of all demands, at $101,- 
OOO. This sum, according to the report of Mr. Wirt, Attorney 
General of the United Stales, was made up by estimating the 
price of the negroes at two or three times their real value.f This 
money being paid over to the owners of slaves, left in the hands 
of the government $149,000 belonging to the Indians. That 
amount was reiained by government for some years, until the 
owners of slaves having already received two or three times 
their real value, petitioned Congress to distribute the remaining 
sum among them as an additional compensation. Congress 
made the appropriation, and the money was paid to them, and 
the Indians were thus defrauded by the General Government of 
$149,000, in order to enrich the slave-holders of Georgia, in 
addition to paying two or three times the real value of the 
negroes.'' f 

'' It should be borne in mind, that these things were trans- 
acted at a period when all Southern statesmen very correctly 
denied that ' Congress or the Federal Governvient possessed any 
powers whatever in relation to slavery.'' During a period of more 
than thirty years was the influence of the Federal Government 
exerted for the purpose of obtaining these fugitive slaves, or in 
extorting from the Indians a compensation for their owners. The 
Senate were called upon to approve those treaties, Congress was 
called on to pass laws, and to appropriate money to carry those 
treaties into effect, and the people of the free States to pay the 
money and bear the disgrace, in order that slavery may be sus- 
tained. But the consequences of these efforts still continue, and 
the government has to this day been unable to extricate itself 
from the difficulties into which these exertions in behalf of 
slavery precipitated it. And the people of the free Stales are to 
this day taxed and dishonored, in consequence of these violations 
of their constitutional rights. These facts will be more fully illus- 
trated when we examine our subsequent relations with the Semi- 
noles and Creeks. But we will now look to our separate treaties 
with the Seminole Indians.''' 

" The first treaty beuveen the United States and these Indians 
bears date at ' Camp Moultrie,' September 18ih, 1823. By this 
treaty the United States agreed to pay them $6,000, and an an- 
nuity of five thousand for twenty years; besides $1,000 yearly 

* 6 American State Papers, 249. 

t Ex. Doc, 1st See., 26rh Congress, v&l. 6, No. 123. 

J Laws U.S., 3 vol., 117. 



8B FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

for twenty years, to be expended in the support of a school, and 
the like sum for the same period to be expended in the support 
of a gun and blacksmith." 

" By the 7lh article of said treaty, the Indians obligated them- 
selves ^io be vigilant and active in preveniing the retreating to or 
passing through the district of country assigned them, of any ab- 
sconding slaves or fugitives from justice.' 'I'hey further stipulated 
'to use all necessary exertions to apprehend and deliver such 
fugitive slaves to the agent of the United States/" " * 

" Before we proceed further, it will be well to caution the 
leader to bear in mind the historical fact, that, prior to the mak- 
ing of this treaty with the Seminole Indians in 1823, they had 
been regarded as a portion of the Creek tribe, from whom 
they separated, and were therefore called ' Seminoles," or ' run- 
aways.' It has already been stated that a large portion of these 
slaves who had left Georgia prior to 1802, had united with these 
bands of Seminoles, had intermarried, and become incorporated 
with them. They had been paid for by the Creeks at the rate 
of five or six times their real value, and the Creeks having paid 
their money for them, sent their agents among the Seminoles to 
demand them as slaves, not doubting that they had derived a 
good title to them and their offspring, from the Government of 
the United States. f But the Seminoles, unwilling to surrender 
their wives and children to the Creeks, and being vexed and 
harassed with these and other demands made upon them for 
slaves, were induced to enter into the treaty of ' Payne's Land- 
ing,' in May, 1832, by which they stipulated to remove West, 
and re-unite with the Creeks. The 7lh article of that treaty is 
in the following words : 

" ' The Seminoles, being anxious to be relieved from repeated 
vexatious demands for slaves, (and other property alleged to 
have been stolen or destroyed by them,) so that they may remove 
unembarrassed to their new homes, the United Slates stipulate 
to have the same properly investigated, and to liquidate snch as 
may be satisfactoiily established, provided the amount does not 
exceed seven thousand dollars.'" $ 

" The Creeks, however, were not satisfied with this arrange- 
ment, but continued to press the Seminoles to surrender their 
■wives and children, as the property of the Creeks." 

" It will be recollected that the Seminoles had agreed in the 
treaty to remove West, and to re-unite with the Creeks, But to 
emigrate under such circumstances would be to place them- 
selves in the power of the Creeks, who would thus gain posses- 
sion of those whom they claimed as slaves, but who were in 
truth wives and children of the Seminoles. They therefore pre- 
ferred to remain and fight the whites, rather than go to the west, 

* Vide treaty, 7 vol., U. S. Laws, 708. 

J Vide Ref)ort of Wiley Thompson, asfent of the United States for the 
Seminole Indians, E. Doc. 125, 3d Session, 25th Congress. 
t See Treaty of" Payne's Landing, 9 vol., U. S. Laws, 1240. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE, B9 

and permit their wives and children to become slaves. They 
were, however, overpowered, and compelled to emigrate. But 
when carried west of Arkansas, they dared not go into the Creek 
country, but settled down upon the territory belonging to the 
Cherokees. Here they remained. The Cherokees protested 
against this act of the Seminoles. The Creeks were anxious to 
have the Seminoles remove vvitliin tljeir jurisdiction, in order to 
get their slaves, which they had pnrchased so dearly of the 
Federal Government, while the Seminoles dared not place them- 
selves in the power of the Creeks; and during several years this 
triangular contention kept those tribes in a state of turmoil, 
and almost constantly threatened them and the United States 
with war. This state of things was wholly brought about by the 
efforts of our government to obtain pay for the fugitive slaves of 
Georgia. The Executive was not an idle spectator of these facts. 
Efforts were constantly made to arrange the difficulty, but with- 
out success, until December last, when it is said that a treaty 
was effectetl between the United States on one part, the Chero- 
kees of another part, the Creeks of another pari, and the Semi- 
noles of the fourth part. We are entirely indebted to reports 
communicated through the public press, and received from offi- 
cers of government, in respect to this treaty and its terms. It 
has not been officially made known to the people. But eo far 
as we are able to learn, the treaty provides : 1. That the Semi- 
noles shall leave the Cherokee lands, and shall settle upon the 
tract assigned to the Creeks. 2. Their wives and children and 
husbands shall remain free. 3. The Seminoles shall pay to the 
Creeks, for their wives, husbands, and children, such sums as 
shall be awarded by the President of the United States. The 
first and last treaty with those southern Indians were negotiated 
for the benefit of slavery ; indeed, most of our treaties with them 
since 1789, have contained some provisions for the benefit of the 
slave-holding interest." — Rights of the free States subverted, by 
J. R. Giddings. 

Soon after the last war with England in 1815, the fugitive 
slaves began to assemble on the east side of the Apalachicola 
river, about fifteen miles from its mouth. Here they erected a 
mud fort, collected provisions, cleared plantations, and com- 
menced the business of farming. "They soon attracted the 
attention of the slave-holders, who became alarmed at these in- 
dications of freedom. Reports were made to the President, of 
the dangerous character of these fugitives." — Dangerous, be- 
cause they were demonstrating to the world, that by honest in- 
dustry, they were abundantly able to " take care of themselves." 
" Their sole object was to live in the quiet and peaceful enjoy- 
ment of freedom. Military officers of the United States directed 
7* 



90 TACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

their attention to this state of things ; and a correspondence oc- 
cupying many pages in regard to this settlement, may be found 
among the executive documents of the 2d session of the 15th 
Congress." In a letter of Com. Patterson to the Secretary of the 
Navy relating to the destruction of this fort, dated August 15th, 
1816, he says: 

" The forces were daily increasing, and they felt themselves 
so strong and secure, that they had commenced several planta- 
tions on the fertile banks of the Apalachicola, which would have 
yielded them every article of sustenance, and which would con- 
sequently in a short time have rendered their establishment 
quite formidable, and highly injurious to the neighboring 
states." ^ 

" On the 15ih of March. 1816, Mr. Crawford, then Secretary of 
War, issued orders to General Jackson, directing him to notily 
the Commander of Pensacola that such a fort existed ; ' and was 
occupied by some tvvo hundred and fifty or three hundred negroes, 
who inveigled the slaves from the frontier of Georgia; and that 
if it should be determined that the subject did not require the 
interference of Congress, measures would be taken for its de- 
struction.' General Jackson issued orders to General Gaines 
' to destroy the fort^ and to restore the negroes to their owners.'^ 
General Gaines issued his orders to Col. Clinch, who advanced 
within a mile or two of the fort, and attempted a cannonade, but 
appears to have failed in making any impression upon it. At 
the same time, Commodore Patterson had despatched two gun- 
boats for the reduction of this fortress. They ascended the river, 
look their position opposite the fort, and, by firing hot shot, blew 
it up. There were about two hundred and eighty negroes, in- 
cluding women and children, in the fort, together with some 
twenty Indians. Of the whole number, two hundred and seventy 
were killed, and several others mortally wounded." f 

" Among them, were some of those fugitives who had left 
their masters in Georgia, prior to 1790, and for whom the Creek 
Indians subsequently paid four or five times their real value, as 
heretofore shown. Those who were neither killed nor mortally 
wountled, were seized by our troops, and restored to their mas- 
ters. X No act or offence against the United States is alleged 
against these people, except that they fled from slavery. For 
that alone they were thus murdered by the Federal Govern- 
ment. 

" The deep damnation of their taking off," 

rests on the people of the free, as well as of the slave States." — 
Rights of the free States subverted. 

* St. Pap. Ses. 15th Cong., v. 6, No. 119, p. 12. 
fSee Com. Patterson's Report, 2d Ses., 15th Cong. 
$ See Ex, Doc. 2d Ses., 15th Cong. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. §4 

In the letter of Com. Patterson to the Secretary of the Navy- 
above referred to, he says : 

" The service rendered by the destruction of this fort, and the 
band of negroes who held it, is of great and manifest importance 
to those Slates bordering on the Creek nation, as it had become 
the general rendezvous of runaway slaves, — an asylum where 
they were assured of being received." 

And this " Democratic and Christian NATIO^f," was so well 
pleased with this unprovoked and cold blooded butchery, that in 
1829, thirteen years afterwards, Congress voted five thousand 
dollars to the officers and crews of these gun-boats. 



PURCHASE OF FLORIDA. 

It will be remembered, that Florida at this time constituted no 
part of the United States. It was a province of Spain, inhabited 
and governed by Spaniards. True, it was a slave-holding prov- 
ince; but slavery under the government of monarchial Spain, 
was quite a different thing from slavery in republican America. 

In Judge Stroud's work on slavery, we find the following : 
"The indulgent treatment of their slaves, by which the Span- 
iards are so honorably distinguished, and the ample and humane 
code of laws which they have enacted, and also enforce, for the 
protection of the blacks, both bond and free, occasion many of 
the Indian slaves of East Florida, who were apprehensive of 
falling into the power of the Americans; and also most of the 
free people of color who resided at St. Augustine, to transport 
themselves to Havana, on the approacJi of the American author- 
ities ;^'^ (i. e., to take possession of the territory after its pur- 
chase.) 

The Indians also, who knew little of republicanism, less of 
" our holy religion," and who were not much belter acquainted 
with our '•' free institutions," treated their slaves as brethren. In 
a letter of Gen. Thompson, dated April 27, 1835, he says : 

"The negroes in the nation dread the idea of being sold 
from their present state of ease and comparative liberty to bond- 
age and hard labor under overseers on sugar and cotton planta- 
tions. They have always had a great influence on the Indians. 
An Indian would almost as soon sell his child as his slave." 

* Laws relating to Slavery, p. 101. 



^2 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

The barbarous murder on the banks of the Apalachicola, 
aroused in the negroes and Indians a feeling of hostility to the 
Americans; and the mild treatment which they received from 
the Spaniards, tended to foster this feeling ; so that the slaves 
were not a whit more in love with their Georgian masters, nor 
any the less inclined to run away from them ; nor were the Indians 
any the less willing to receive them kindly in consequence of 
this fiendish slaughter. And the slaves of Georgia and Ala- 
bama slill continued to run away from the Christian barbarism 
of those States, and to find an asylum in the humanity of the 
Seminole savages. This asylum our Government was deter- 
mined to destroy. Accordingly, " the villages of these fugitives 
were burned, their plantations laid waste, their corn and other 
provisions used for the support of the army; and they, together 
with the Indians, dispersed into various parts of the territory, to 
avoid the vengeance of the Americans." John Lee Williams, in 
his "Florida," published in 1837, though evidently disposed to 
conceal the worst part of the truth, says : — " Great exertions have 
been made to get the Indian negroes away by false claims ; and 
many negroes have been taken away by force andfraud.''^ 

" This was effected by a wanton invasion of a territory belong- 
ing to a friendly power. When that power refused to surrender 
her fortifications, on demand of our troops, our guns were turned 
npon them, and they were compelled to submit. 

When our commanding officer was called to an account for 
these violations of faith, with a power at peace with us, he re- 
plied, that ' these fortifications had become the rendezvous for embody- 
ing hostile negroes and Indians, and giving them comfort and pro- 
tection,''^ and no further inquiries were made upon the subject." 

But lest these continued acts of aggression should involve us 
in serious difficulties with Spain ; and in order to obtain greater 
facilities for slave hunting, after protracted negotiations, Florida 
was purchased in 1819, at an expense to the people of five mil- 
lions of dollars ; and the territory waf? brought under "republi- 
can " government. The lands were comparatively worthless. 
General Jesup informed us, ^^that they would not pay for the med- 
icines used by our troops while removing the Indians ; " and the 
government of the territory has probably cost twenty times the 

* See General Jackson's Memorial to the Senate, Feb. 23, 1820. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 93 

amount of revenue received from it> But then the nation got 
the hnnling-ground, which was the sole object of the purchase ; 
and after securing its title deed, and talcing formal possession of 
the country, the next step was to break up the asylum of the fu- 
gitive slaves by exterminating the Seminoles. This scheme "was 
at length accomplished by means of 



UT.T/^T.TT^. TTTiT^ ,, 



THE SECOND SEMINOLE OR ^UaORIDA WAR 

The reader will recollect, that by the treaty of" Payne's Land- 
ing," entered into in 1832, the Seminoles agreed to emigrate 
West, and re-unite with the Creeks ; and that they refused to go 
lest their wives and children should be taken from them by the 
Creeks and held as slaves. The people of Florida, however, 
were anxious to rid their territory of them ; and a large number 
of the principal inhabitants joined in a petition to the President 
for their removal, in which they declare, that 

'^ While this indomitable people continue where they now are, 
the owners of slaves in our territory, and even in the States con- 
tiguous, cannot for a moment, in anything like security, enjoy 
this kind of property." 

"The President referred the memorial to the Secretary of 
War, and he called upon the a:jent of the United Slates, then 
with the Seminoles, for information. The agent, (General Wiley 
Thompson,) replied, that 'the principal causes which operate to 
cherish this feeling hostile to emigration are, first, the fear that 
their re-union with the Creeks, which will subject ihem to the 
government and control of the Creek national council, will be a 
surrender of a large amount of negro property now held by these 
people, to the Creeks as an antagonist claimant;' and Gen. 
Thompson further adds: 'This Creek claim to negroes now in 
possession of the Seminoles, which is supposed to be the first 
cause of hostility to the emigration of the latter tribe, grows out 
of the treaty of 1821, between the United States and the form- 
er.' " t — Rights of the free States subverted. 

After receiving this important information, our army was or- 
dered to that territory for the purpose of compelling the Indians 
to emigrate. On the 27lh of Jan., 1835, Gen. Thompson called for 

* In 1839, Custom liouse officers at St. Augustine and St. Johns, were 
paid two thousand six liundrcd and fifty dollars, for collecting nothing. 

J. R. GlDDINGS. 

t See House Doc. No. 274, 1st Ses. 24th Congress, 



94 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

more troops, and the war began. Hungry men-stealers snatched 
at their prey. 

The Washington correspondent of the N. Y. Journal of Com- 
merce, June 3, 1836, says : 

"' It was stated on the floor of Congress and uncontradicted, 
that our government recognized the claim of the slave-holders, 

and SENT AGENTS TO KIDNAP THE CHILDREN OF THE SeMINOLES." 

They seized Oceola, the chief of the Seminoles, chained him 
to a log, lore his wife from him, and with four hundred and sixty 
others adjudged to be slaves by the staff officers, delivered her 
over to interminable bondage.* No marvel that an Indian chief, 
as he looked on his little children and thought of their stolen 
mother, should vow vengeance on the robbers. 

This slave-hunt, which has been dignified by the name of 
*' war," was continued through a period of five years. It was 
protracted on the one side by the desperation of fugitives, prefer- 
ring death to slavery ; and on the other by a determination to an- 
nihilate those who gave them shelter and protection. A Mobile 
paper of March 28th, 1838, says : 

''It is the power to entice awoy and instruct in bushfighting so 
many of our slaves ihat we would wish to annihilate. These 
Seminoles cannot remain in the peninsula of Florida, without 
threatening the internal safety of the South." 

Of its destruction to life, the Army and Navy Chronicle says : 

" Apprised as we have been of the deadly service in Florida in 
which our gallant army has been, since 1835, engaged, we are 
not a little surprised to learn the great mortality among its offi- 
cers and men." 

We have no data from which we can estimate the number of 
lives sacrificed in that war; but it may be safely asserted, that 
the capture of each slave cost the lives of two white men, and at 
least eighty thousand dollars in cash. The whole expense of 
this war has been estimated at forty millions of dollars. 

The following letter from Gen. Zachary Taylor to the War 
Department, will illustrate one of the modern modes of warfare, 
as practiced in the United Slates of America in the nineteenth 
century ; 

* House Doc. 52, 3d Ses. 27th Con. 



facts for the people. 95 

"Head Quarters. Army of the South, ) 
Fori Brook, July 28, 1839. } 

Sir: — T have the honor to enclose you a cotnrnunicaiion, this 
moment received, on ihe sutijeci of prt cnrinir blood-hounds fronn 
the Island ol Cuba, lo aid the army in its operntiotis a<:aiiist the 
hostile^ in Florida. I am dtcidedly in favor of the measure, and 
htg leave again to urge it, as the otdy means of ridding the country 
of the Indians, who are now broken up into synall parties that take 
shelter in swamps and hammocks as the army approaches, making it 
impossible for us to follow or overtake them without the aid of such 
auxiliaries. 

Should this measure meet the approbation of the Department, 
and the nece.^jsary authority be granted, I will open a correspon- 
dence on the subject with Mr. Evertson, through Major Hunt, Assist- 
ant Quarter Master at Savannah, and will authorize him, if it can 
be done on reasonable terms, to employ a few dogs, with persons who 
understand their management. 

I wish it distinctly understood, that my object in employing: 
dogs is only to ascertain where the Indians can be found, not to 
worry them,. {! ! ! ) 

I have the honor to be, your obedient servant, 

(Signed) Z. Taylor, 

Bt. Br. Gen. U. S. A. Commanding. 
To Gen. R. Jones, Washington, D. C." 

Tender-hearted rnan ! He v^rished " 07ily to ascertain where 
the Indians were, not to worry them." 

Whether they were ^^ worried'''' or not the reader can judge. 
The hounds were procured ; and blood-hounds, soldiers, and offi- 
cers marched side by side under the star spangled banner, not only 
in pursuit of the humane Seminole, but the panting fugitive also, 
who had fled from Southern oppression.* 

The English nation has fixed an indelible stain on its char- 
acter, by employing the Hessians to fiyht against the Colonies 
in the war of the Revolution. But here we see these same colo- 
nies, after becoming "free and independent States,'' and after 
exhausting their own ingenuity as well as their military prowess, 
in hunting down and catching fugitive slaves — forming an alli- 
ance with the dogs of Cuba, and actually running and fighting 
side by side with their blood-hound allies. After scouring her 
plains with armed men and blood-hounds, and either slaughter- 
ing or driving from her borders the last vestige of those unfortu- 
nate red men, in whose bosoms was left one single throb of pity 

* House Doc. 125, 8d Session, 25th Congress. 



96 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

for the panting fugitive, Florida, with her whips and chains and 
thumb-screws, her yokes and gags and branding-irons and 
trained bulldogs and hunters of men, her gory hammocks steam- 
ing in the sun, the bones of her murdered native children bleach- 
ing on their father's graves, or rotting amidst the blood and ashes 
of their conflagrated homes, with hot haste — after two hour's 
debate, has been admitted as a meet co-paitner to this " great 
sisterhood of States ! " She stands side by side in loving fellow- 
ship with Massachusetts; and Massachusetts does not blush at 
the relationship ! 



TREATIES AND NEGOTIATIONS WITH 
ENGLAND. 

Durini? our two wars with Great Britain, multitudes of slaves 
fled from their masters, and sought protection under the British 
flag. To enable the reader to judge of the number that escaped 
during the revolutionary war, we insert the following extract 
from Ramsay's History. 

*' When the British evacuated Charleston, S. C, in 1782, Gov- 
ernor Matthews demanded the restoration of some thousands of 
negroes who were within their lines. # # % * % ^ These, 
however, were but a small part of the whole taken away at the 
evacuation, but that number is very inconsiderable when com- 
pared with the thousands that were lost from the first to the last 
ot the war. It has been computed by good judges, that between 
the years 1775 and 1783, the State of South Carolina lost twen- 
ty-five THOUSAND NEGROES." [At least a fifth part of all the 
slaves in the State at the beginning of the war. See page 30.] — 
Ramsay's Hist. S. C. v. 1. pp. 473-4. 

Col. Lee of Virginia, in his Memoirs of the war in the South- 
ern Department, vol. 2, p. 456. says : 

" It is asserted upon the authority of the best informed citizens 
of South Carolina, that n^ore than twenty thousand slaves were 
lost to the State in consequence of the war." 

Extract of a letter from Mr. Jefferson, then Secretary of State, 
to Mr. Hammond, Minister of Great Britain, dated Philadelphia, 
Dec. 15, 1791: 

" On withdrawing the troops from New York, a large embarka- 
tion of negroes, the property of the inhabitants of the United 
States, took place. # =^ * # A very great number was car- 



FACTS FOR THE PEOi'LE. 97 

ried ofTin private vessels, without admillini? the inspection of the 
Ariiericaii Cornmissioiiers." — See "Political Conespondence," 
Papers relative to Great Biilain, p. 4. 

Strange ^'■Liberty''' that, for which the colonies were fighting I 
It had not half so many attractions to their slaves, as the " tyran- 
ny " against which they were contending. 

The Virginia and Maiyland claimants under the treaty of 
Ghent, set forth that, 

"In July and August, 1814, the enemy made several land- 
ings on the northern neck of Virginia, On a sudden an order 
came, that all the troops should be marched to the defence of 
Washington, and this neck of eighteen miles wide, was emptied 
of all its efficient forces for nearly six weeks. During the ab- 
sence of the forces there was nothing to restrain our slaves, and 
they flocked in hundreds to the enemy.'''' See their memorial. — 
St. Pap., 2 Sess., 20th Cong., v. 5, No. 190, p. 4. 

To enable the reader to form some estimate of the number of 
slaves who escaped from our Democratic liberty, and sought a 
refuge under Monarchial tyranny during the last war, we give 
the following extract from the report of the Committee of Ways 
and Means, to the House of Representatives, Jan. 5, 1819. 

" At the conclusion of the war in 1815, it being known that 
MANY THOUSANDS of the slavcs of OUT citizcns had been carried 
otf by the Bri'ish ships of war," &c. — Am. St. Fap., F. Rel., v. 
4., p. 114. 

Also the following extract of a letter from the Hon. John 
Quincy Adams to Lord Castlereah, Feb. 12, 1816. 

" In his letter of the 5ih September, the undersigned had the 
honor of enclosing a list of 702 slaves carried away after the 
ratification of the treaty of peace from Cumberland Island, and 
the waters adjacent ;%####*- a number perhaps 
still greater was carried away from Tangier Island in the State 
of Virginia, and from other places." — Am. St. Pap., 2d Ses.^ IGtk 
Cong., No. 82, p. 82. 

On the conclusion of peace in 1815, when the British squadron 
embarked from the Chesapeake to Bermuda, they took with them 
several slaves who had taken refuge on board their ships. 
Tracking the scent of a fugitive, with the keenness of its planta- 
tion dogs, our government followed in their wake. An agent 
was hurried ofl' to Burmuda to demand them of the governor. 
When the agent, Thomas Spaulding, appeared before that dig- 
nitary, and presented his request, the reply of the Englishman was 
8 



98 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

worthy of his country and his race : — *' I would rather that Ber- 
muda, with every man, woman and child in it, were sunk under 
the sea, than surrender up a sii!i2:le slave who had sought pro- 
tection under the flai^ of Eni^land." 

The ayent then applied to Admiral Griffith, commanding on 
the Bermuda station ; and promised to furnish him with a list of 
each slave claimed, which he expected to receive in a few days 
from the United Slates. The Admiral told him, that he need 
not wait ; as there was neither at Bermuda, nor any other British 
settlement, any authority " competent to deliver up persons, 
who, during the late wars, had placed themselves under the 
protection of the British flag." * 

From Governors and Admirals, our government next applied 
to the British Cabinet. And for the space of twenty years, did 
the official slave-mongers of '' this great Democratic confedera- 
cy," ply the British Government with its diplomacy, for the pur- 
pose of obtaining compensation for its runaway slaves. After refer- 
ring the subject to Russia, at the request of the Americans, and 
holding convention after convention, for the adjustment of a ques- 
tion of such vital import to " our Republican liberties," the British 
Cabinet, wearied with the importunities of the American Gov- 
ernment, and sick of the controversy, entered into a third con- 
vention on the 13lh of November, 1836, by which the sum of one 
million tivo hundred and four thousand dollars was paid over to 
the agents of this slave-holding government.! 

Every body knows that great numbers of slaves have escaped 
from "our free institutions," and found an asylum under the 
British Government, in Canada. On the 10th of May, 1828, the 
House of Representatives, by resolution, " requested the Presi- 
dent to open negotiations with the British Government, in the 
view to obtain an arrangement, whereby fugitive slaves, who 
have taken refuge in Canada, may be surrendered." J 

But the Executive had anticipated the wishes of the House; 
for as early as June 19, 1826, Henry Clay, who was then Secre- 
tary of State, wrote a letter of instructions to Mr. Gallatin, Min- 
ister to Great Britain, of which the following is an extract: 

"You are instructed to propose a stipulation for a mutual sur- 

*St. Pap., 14th Cong., 2Bd Ses. Senate, Dec. No. 82. 
t Laws of Onited States, vol. 8, 698. 
X See Journal of that dale. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 99 

render of all persons held to service or labor under ihe laws of 
one party, who escape into the tenitoiies of the other. Our ob- 
ject ill this stipulation is to provide for b. growing evil. Persons 
of the above description escape principally from Virginia and 
Kentucky, into Upper Canada. In proporiion as they are swccess- 
ful in their retreat to Canada, will \\\q number of fugitives increase. 
The motive for getting them back is the desire which is gener- 
ally felt to prevent the example of the fugitives becoming con- 
tagious.^'' 

" The States of Virginia and Kentucky are 'particularly anxious 
on this subject. The General Assembly of the latler has repeat- 
edly invoked the interposition of the United States Government 
wiih Great Britain. You will therefore press the matter."* 

This subject was pressed by our Minister, until he was distinctly 
told, "that such an arrangement on the part of Great Britain was 
impossible." " That the laws of Parliament gave freedom to every 
slave ivho should land on British ground.'^'' 

In 1843, several slaves escaped from Florida, and fled to the 
Island of New Providence. An agent was sent to that Island to 
demand them of the governor. An officer, and a detachment of 
the crew of one of our ships of war, together with the United 
Slates' Revenue Cutter, Nautilis, were also employed in an un- 
successful attempt to catch these slaves, and drag them back to 
their republican chains and whipping posts. 

" In 1831, ' The Comet,' a slave-ship from Alexandria, for New 
Orleans, was wrecked on the Island of Abaco, and her slaves 
and crew were taken to Nassau, in the Island of New Provi- 
dence. The Island being under British laws, the slaves were of 
course free as soon as they landed on the British territory. They 
had been free untler our laws, from the moment they were a 
league from our coast. Thus the reader vs-ill see that by the 
laws of both nations they were freemen. But the slave mer- 
chants, finding themselves unable to control the movements of 
their human cargo, called upon the authorities of the Island for 
assistance, to aid them in holding their fellow-men in subjection. 
But. there being no law there, by which one foreiirner could 
control the liberty of another, all aid was refused, and the slave- 
mongers returned to the United Slates, and claimed the assist- 
ance of the National Government to aid them in carrying out 
their attempted speculation in human flesh, by demanding of the 
British Government a comper,sation for iheir loss." 

" In 1833, the brig ' Encomium,' from Charleston for New 
Orleans, v^-iih slaves, was wrecked near Abaco. and her slaves 
obtained their liberty the same way." 

♦ St. Pap., 2d Ses., 20 Cong., vol. I., No. 10. 



100 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

^'Tn 1835, 'The Enterprise,' another slave-ship, was driven into 
Bermuda, a British port, by stress of weather, and her slaves 
were also liberated by the force of British laws.'' 

"These repeated losses alarmed the slave merchants, and 
threatened seriously to affect the prospects of those who were 
engaged in breeding slaves for market. The Executive entered 
upon the subject with great zeal and energy. Instructions were 
sent to our minister at London, directing him to make demand 
of the British Government for reparation to the slave merchants 
who owned these cargoes of human beings. Not because the 
British Government or any subject of the British Crown had 
gained anything in consequence of these persons having obtained 
their freedom; but because the slave-dealers had sustained a 
loss, in consequence of the English Government not having en- 
acted laws authorizing the American slave-trade. He was in- 
formed that this feature of the British laws ' was too dangerous to 
a large section of our country to be tolerated.^ The demand was 
made, and as our minister was himsell" an extensive slave-hold- 
er, he entered upon the subject with so much zeal, that his as- 
sertions were soon carried far beyond the botmds of truth. In an 
official communication to Lord Palmerston, he declared that our 
* Government had more than once, in the most solemn manner^ deter- 
mined that slaves killed in the service of the United States, even in a 
state of ivar, were to he regarded as property, and not as persons j 
and the government held responsible for them.^ By means of the 
most unceasing energy, and misrepresentations on the part of 
our minister, the British Government were induced to pay over 
to our Executive the sum of £"25,000 sterling, for the benefit of 
those who claimed to own persons on board ' the Comet ' and 
' the Encomium.' These vessels were wrecked, and the per- 
sons on board obtained their liberty prior to the taking effect of 
the general emancipation act, which liberated the slaves in the 
British West Lidia Islands. But the 'Enterprise' had enteied 
Bermuda after the taking effect of that law, and the British Min- 
isters refused all compensation to the slave owners on board that 
ship. Partial success, however, stimulated the Executive to a 
more vigorous prosecution of the claims of the unfoitunale slave- 
dealers who owned the cargo of the ' Enterprise.' Fresh instruc- 
tions were sent to our minister at London ; and to aid the Exe- 
cutive with the influence of the Senate, resolutions declaring the 
Iciw of nations to authorize a slave-ship when driven by stress of 
weather to enter the port of a friendly power, and to hold control of 
the slaves on board until she can refit, were introduced into the 
Senate by the Hon. J, C. Calhoun ; and althoui^h their fallacy was 
apparent to every county court lawyer, yet they were adopted 
by the Senate without a dissenting voice. Most of the Senators 
from free States, however, refused to vote.=^ To aid the Execu- 

* See Senate Jour., 1st Ses., 26th Cong, 



TACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 101 

tlve Still further, the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the House 
of Representatives made a report, in which this subject was men- 
tioned, and an allusion was made to the unpleasant consequen- 
ces which would follow a final rejection of the demand by Great 
Britain." * 

While this was the state of diplomatic corresponilence be- 
tween the two iiovernments, the ' Hermosa,' another slave-ship, 
was wrecked, and her slaves obtained their freedum in the same 
manner as ttiose on board the other ships. In October, 1842, 
soon after the wreck of the Hermosa, the Creole left Richmond, 
Va., for New Oi leans, with slaves on board. While at sea, the 
slaves rose upt)n the crew, killed one of them, and look the ship 
to Nassau, and, leaving her to the control of her captam, they 
went on shore in puisuit of their own happiness. These circum 
stances appear to have aroused the whole slave-holding interest. 
Instructions were again transmitted to our minister at London, 
and he was exhorted to press the demand upon the British Gov- 
ernment for compensation for the slaves on board those ship=. 
The Senate called for the correspondence, discussion ensued, 
in which grave Senators threatened destruction to ttiose Islands 
if compensation were not granted to the slave merchants who 
had thus lost their cargoes of slaves."' 

On this subject Mr. King said, "If such outrages continue, 
nothing could prevent a collision; and unless the British Gov- 
ernment should retrace her steps, war must inevitably ensue.^' 

Mr. Calhoun, "hoped the citizens would know what protection 
this government could extend to their property. And it we can- 
not obtain justice, every man with an American heart in his 
bosom, will be ready to raise his hand against oppression.'''' 

Mr. Barrow said, that " if these contemptible British subjects 
at Nassau, are permitted to go on in this way, seizing by force 
of arms, and liberating slaves belonging to American citizens, 
the South would be compelled to fit out an armament and de- 
stroy those towns." 

Such was the "outburst of indignant feeling." in the legisla- 
ture of ^'ihejreest Nation on Earth,'^ when intelligence reached 
the Capitol, that a cargo of their slaves had obtained their free- 
dom, by landing within the limits of a Monarchial govern- 
ment. 



ATTEMPT TO OBTAIN FUGITIVE SLAVES FROM 
MEXICO. 

Encouraged by the success which have crowned its endeavors 
to induce the British Government to become the catchpolls to 
the slave-holders, this government next tried to seduce the Mex- 

* Se« Jour. H. Rep., 2d Ses., 26th Cong. 

8# 



102 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

icans from their allegiance to the principles of freedom, and to 
persuade them to act the part of watch-dogs to the plantaiions of 
the Souih-westerii slave-holding Stales. Hardly had Mexico be- 
come a nation, when the subject was brought before the Ameri- 
can Congress — that great palladium of slavery. As an entering 
wedge, on the 18th Dec, 1826, Mr. Brent of Louisiana, offered 
the following : 

'■'• Resolved, That the President of the Unied States be requested 
to inform this House whether any measures have been taken to 
obtain the runaway negro slaves from Louisiana and elsewhere, 
which have taken refuge in the territories of Mexico."* 

And accordingly a treaty was negotiated with the Mexican 
Minister for the surrender of such fugitive slaves as might seek 
a refuge on the soil of that Republic. But the treaty was re- 
jected by the Mexican Congress, which denounced slavery as 
" a palpable violation of the first principles of a free republic." 

Upon the subject of this refusal, Mr. Poinsett, our Minister to 
Mexico, made to his government the following commentary: 

"The article for the restoration of fugitive slaves was rejected 
on philanthropic principles altogether. Such are most likely to 
influence the young legislators, of young nations." 

The nation which Mr. Poinsett had "the honor to represent," 
had got to be full fifty years old ; — man grown, for an individ- 
ual, but for a nation, it was still in its swaddling clothes. But 
though young in years, it was hoary in crime, and bloody with 
guilt. And this was doubtless the reason of its putting on such 
airs of superiority. 



SOUTHAMPTON INSURRECTION. 

In August, 1831. a few slaves in the upper part of Southamp- 
ampton county, Virginia, commenced an insurrection. Their 
whole numbers perhaps at no time exceeded one hundred. 
When the news reached Norfolk, the aulhorilies of that city 
made immediate application to Col. House, then commanding at 
Fortress Munroe, who, at six o'clock the next morning, embarked 
on board a steamboat with three companies of United States 
troops, for the scene of action. He was reinforced by a detach- 
ment from on board the United States ships Warren and Natchez, 
amounting in all to about three hundred men, who without any 

* Jour. H. R. for 1826-7, p. 70. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 103 

authority whatever, thus turned out to suppress the efforts of 
their fellow-nien, who were exerting themselves to attain that 
liberty lor which so much blood was shed during the war of our 
Revolution. Their elForls to regain the inalienable rigiits vviih 
which God had endowed them, were as !ei;al, and far more just 
and holy, ihan. those of Washington and hh associates during 
the Revolution; inasmuch as ihey fouaht for natural rights, 
while our fathers contended for political privileges. Yet so 
eager were these officers of the United Slates army and navy to 
put down these attempts of their fellow-men to break the chains 
of oppression, that they waited for no orders or directions from 
proper authority, but, in violation of the Constitution, of law, and 
of justice, they sought to kill and to murder those who were seek- 
ing to obtain their freedom." * 



OTHER ACTS or CONGRESS- 

As early as 1790, Congress passed a naturalization law, pre- 
scribing the mode in which "any alien being a white person ** 
might be admitted to the rights of an American citizen. 

In 1792, an act was passed for organizing the militia, providing 
that "each and eveiy free, able-bodied white male citizen," 
&c. 

No other nation on earth prohibits any portion of its citizens 
from partaking in the national defence. But this nation enslaves 
its colored citizens, sells them at auction, robs them of wives, 
children, homes; of everything they hold dear; — scourges 
them till the earth is watered with their tears, and fattened with 
their blood. And it may be that the fire of patriotism burns too 
dimly on the ' altar of their hearts,' for them to fight very bravely 
in defence of such a country. But why prohibit those who might 
wish to fight, but for the purpose of creating a degrading dis- 
tinction 1 

The fourth section of the act of 1810, organizing the Post- 
Office department, provides that " no other than a free white 
person shall be employed in carrying the mail of the United 
States, either as a post-rider, or a driver of any carriage carrying 
the Mail," under a penalty of fifty dollars. f 

While Florida was a territory of the United States, the bills 
passed by its legislature were submitted to Congress. If ap- 
proved by that body, they became laws; but not otherwise. 

* Niles' Register. f. lay's View, p. 9. 



104 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

Thus, Congress enacted, that if any person should aid any other 
person held as a slave to escape from slavery, he should be 
punished by the pillory, branding, fine and imprisonment. In 
July, 1844, Jonathan Walker, a citizen of Massachusetts, was 
seized on the high seas, between Florida and the Bahamas, 
charged with having violated this law, carried in a United 
Slates' steamer to Pensacola, tried before a United States' Court, 
set in a United States' pillory, branded with a United States' 
branding iron, chained with a United States chain to the naked 
floor of a wretched prison, without either bed, chair or table ; 
and after being confined in this horrid condition more than 
eleven months, was released on condition of paying into the 
treasury of this liberty loving nation the sum of five hundred and 
ninety-six dollars. 



EFFORTS TO PREVENT EMANCIPATION IN 
CUBA. 

While Mexico and the South American Republics were &\rug- 
gling for their independence, ihey did not, like their more North- 
ern neighbor, march to the battle field with the sword in one 
hand, while they flourished the slave-driver's whip in the other. 
On the contrary, they began simultaneously with their efforts to 
obtain their own liberty, to extend its blessings to their bondmen. 
And when they had fairly achieved their independence, they 
gave freedom to every slave within iheir borders. At the time 
of the Congress of Panama, Spain was still striving to maintain 
her supremacy over these colonies. This Congress assembled 
in 1825 ; and the United States were invited to attend. And as 
" Cuba was at a short distance, devoted to the royal cause, and 
affording a depot for the royal forces ready to prey on their com- 
merce, Mexico and Columbia proposed to invade this island with 
the view of throwing off the royal authority." But this govern- 
ment, true to those slave-holding instincts which had guided and 
controlled all its foreign relations, saw nothing but mischief in 
the proposed measure. 

Mexico had commenced the work of abolition the year before. 
Columbia was doing the same. With these republic?, the words 
of liberty were not mere "rhetorical flourishes." They meant 
something, even to the poor bondman. Yet they were signs of 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 105 

ill-omen to the South, which this government could not help 
seeing. It saw, further, that the conquest of Cuba by these re- 
publics, would result in the abolition of slavery in tliat island. 
And as the naiion had given its pledge to the slave-holding 
interest, and had always lived it out in the fulness of its spirit, 
the idea of emancipation in Cuba was not to be tolerated. 

Accordingly, our representatives to the Congress of Panama, 
Messrs. Anderson and Sargeant, were instructed by Henry Clay, 
who was then Secretary of Slate, to use their utmost endeavors 
to dissuade Mexico and Columbia from the proposed invasion. 
In his letter of instructions of May 8ih, 1826, he says : 

" It is required by the frank and friendly relations which we 
most anxiously desire ever to cherish with the new republics, 
that you should, without reserve, explicitly state that the United 
States have too much at stake in the fortunes of Cuba, to allow 
them to see with indifference a war of invasion prosecuted in a 
desolating manner; or to see employed in the purposes of such 
a war, one race of the inhabitants combatting against another. 
The humanity of the United Slates in respect to the weaker, aufl 
which in such a terrible strugjile would probably be the suflfer- 
ing portion, and the duty to defend themselves against the con- 
tagion of such near and daiijicrous examples, would cons'iairi 
them even at the hazard of losing the friendship of Mexico and 
Columbia to employ all means necessary to their security."' 

In ca«e Mexico and Columbia should send an army of deliver- 
ance to Cuba, for the purpose of " loosing the bands of wicked- 
ness," and giving freedom to the thousands of her sighing cap- 
tives, thus ridding that island of a most heaven-daring system 
of oppression, — '^the humanity of the United States" would 
prompt them to send over an army of the " sons of liberty," to 
fight in behalf of these Spanish slave-holders. How strangely 
are men drawn together by the afhnities of a common interest. 
Pilate and Herod could be made friends, when there was a "just 
man '^ to crucifj-. 

Our Minister at St. Petersburg was instructed : 

*• To endeavor to engase the Russian Government to contribute 
its best exertions towards terminating the existini; contest be- 
tween Spain and her colonies. Fiom the vicinity of Cuba to the 
United States, and the nature of its populalion, their government 
caimot be indifferent to any political change, Lo which that island 
may be destined."'* 

* Letters from Mr. Clay to Mr. Middlelon, lOdi May, 1825. 



106 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

Spain was also begged and entreated to put a stop to the war, 
lest it might result in the abolition of slavery in Cuba, and so 
shake the system so fondly cherished by the " democracy " in the 
United States. 

Mr. Clay, in his letter to Mr. Everett of April 27th, J825, says : 
" It is not for the netv republics, that the President wishes you to 
urge upon Spain the expediency of concluding the war. The 
possible contingencies of a protracted war, might bring upon the 
Government of the United States duties and obligations, the per- 
formance of which, however painfid it should be, they might not feel 
at liberty to declined * 

Some extracts from the debates in Congress on the Panama 
Mission will further illustrate the solicitude of the Americans for 
the safety of their " peculiar institution." 

Mr. Randolph of Virginia, said : "Cuba possesses an immense 
negro population. In case Mexico and Columbia should invade 
Cuba at all, it is unquestionable that this invasion will be made 
with this principle, this geyiius of universal emancipation, this 
sweeping anathema against the white population in front, and 
then, sir, ivhat is the situation of the Southern States?" 

Mr. Johnson of Louisiana, said ; " We know that Mexico and 
Columbia have long contemplated the independence of Cuba. 
What then, at such a crisis, becomes the duty of this government? 
Send your Ministers instantly to this assembly where the meas- 
ure is maturing. Advise with them, remonstrate — menace, if 
necessary, against a step so dangerous to us." 

Mr. Berrien, of Georgia, said : '♦ With a due regard to the safety 
of the Southern States, can you suffer these islands to pass into 
the hands of BUCANiERS, drunk ivith their neio born liberty^ If 
our interests and our safety shall require us to say to these new 
republics, Cuba and Porto Rico must remain as they are, we are 
free to say it. And by the blessing of God (?) and the strength of 
our arms, to enforce the declaration ; and let me say to gentle- 
men, that these high considerations do require it, — the vital in- 
terest oftlie South requires i7."f 

In what respect did the United States differ from " these new 
republics," which this sturdy democrat here stigmatized as " Buc- 
aniers?" Certainly there is a broad difference. The United 
States, whether bucaniers or not, never got so " drunk with their 
new born liberty," as to demolish their human flesh shambles, in 
the boisterous merriment of their intoxication. They are always 

♦Senate, Dec. 1st Ses., 19th Cong., vol. 3 
t Cong. Debates, vol. 2. 



FACTS FOR THE PKOPLE. 107 

sober enough to keep the watch-dogs of iheir plantations well 
trained; their whips, and gags, and thumb-screws, their iron col- 
lars and chains, and bowie-knives and branding-irons, ready for 
use. They never for a moment forget these; not even in the very 
midst of their great national revels, in honor of "freedom and the 
rights of man." 

Whether Mexico and Columbia were influenced by the threats 
and "menaces" of the United States or not, they gave up the 
talked of invasion; but the war still continued, and with it, the 
fears of the Americans. They were alarmed lest some change in 
in its fortunes might yet give freedom to the slaves in Cuba. And 
Spain was again urged to cease this warfare, so hazardous to " the 
vital interests of the South." On the 22d of October, 1829, Mr. 
Van Buren, then Secretary of State, wrote a letter of instructions 
to Nr. Van Ness, Minister to Spain, in which he says: " Consid- 
erations connected with a certain class of our populations, make it 
the interest of the Southern section of the Union, that no attempt 
should be made in that island to throw off the yoke of Spanish de- 
pendence ; the first effect of which would be the sudden emancipa- 
tion of a numerous slave population, whose result could not but be 
sensibly felt on tlie adjacent shores of the United States" 



RELATIONS TO HAYTI. 

The existence of this republic is almost coeval with our own. 
Its government, as an independent nation, was organized on the 
1st of July, 1798. And as there are many gross misconceptions 
in the public mind relative to the causes of the revolution in the 
Island, and as we have been so often told that the " horrors " of 
St. Domingo resulted from, and were the legitimate fruits of 
emancipation, it may be well to take a glance at so much of its 
history as will prove that emancipation was not in any sense the 
cause of the troubles and insurrections in St. Domingo; and that 
the history of that colony furnishes the clearest proof of the entire 
safety of immediate emancipation. 

In 1790, the free colored population was supposed to be some- 
what greater than that of the whites. Though many of this class 
were wealthy and educated, they were debarred from all political 
privileges on account of their complexion. The Island was at this 



108 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

time a colony of France. The entire population was estimated 
at 086,000. 600,000 of whom were slaves, 44,000 free people of 
color, and the reinaiiider whites. 

The wliites were divided into three classes ; the Creole plan- 
ters, or large proprietors, constituting the native aristocracy, the 
European residents, composing the office-holders, adventurers, 
speculators, and petiis blancs, the jipoorer whites, tradesmen, me- 
chanics. 

Although each of these classes hated the others, they had one 
feeling in common, and that was a most implacable abhorrence of 
the mulattoes or free colored people, who it is stated owned one- 
third of the real estate, and one-fourth of the personal property of 
the Island. Notwithstanding this, they were compelled to do any 
kind of public service witliout compensation ; degraded and in- 
sulted in every possible way short of absolute enslavement. 

The slaves were most brutally treated in the French part of 
the Island. Large masses of them consisted of newly imported 
Africans, who still retained the superstitions and usages of their 
native country. 

On the 27th of December, 1788, the States General of France 
passed a resolution to admit to that body a number of the " Tiers 
Etat,'^ (persons of third estate,) equal to that of the other two or- 
ders. When the news reached St. Domingo, the white colonists 
immediately resolved to assert their right to be represented, and 
commissioned eighteen delegates, who were fully recognized by 
the States General. About this time the society of Les Amis des 
JVoirs, (friends of the blacks,) was formed. Every blow struck for 
liberty in France, electrified the colonies. When the fall of the 
Bastile reached St. Domingo, the colonists became wrought up 
with intense excitement. "Liberty and Fraternity" sounded 
from the lips of all classes. 

Meantime, in the general discussion of the subject of human 
rights, the mulattoes or free people of color, began to take a deep 
interest. Many of this number were at Paris receiving an educa- 
tion ; and their correspondence with friends at home, stimulated 
them to the demand of rights, which the French Revolutionists 
could with no consistency deny. 

In 1789, the mulattoes sent a deputation to Paris to urge their 
claims to representation in the Colonial Assembly. They pre- 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 109 

sented 6,000,000 livres to the government, and pledged one-fifth 
of their property to aid in the liquidation of the national debt. 
Encouraged by the sympathies of Lafayette and his associates, 
and others, the free people of color in the colony began to press 
their claims on the attention of the authorities; but they were 
at once met with the most unrelenting opposition from all 
classes of the whites. Lacombe, a mulatto, was hung at Cape 
Francois for having merely signed a petition on the subject. A 
venerable magistrate at Petite Goave, who had drawn up a simi- 
lar petition for the mulattoes, was dragged from his house and 
brutally murdered. The petiis blancs, (small whites.) signalized 
themselves above all others, by their outrages against the unfor- 
tunate people who, thus far, had distinguished themselves for their 
forbearance. 

Lafayette and his friends were meanwhile urging the claims of 
the free people of color, and had the satisfaction of procuring the 
passage of a decree by the National Assembly, dated March 8th, 
1790, that every person of twenty-five years of age, the proprietor 
of real estate, or in fault of that, who had been a resident 
of the place for two years, and paid his taxes for support of 
the colony, should be entitled to vote for members of the Colonial 
Assembly. Let it he ohstrvf-d^ that the contest concerned not the 
natural rights of the slaves, whom nobody proposed to emancipate., 
but the political rights o/the free people of color. 

The promulgation of the act kindled a flame in the colony. 
The whites execrated the National Assembly. The Colonial As- 
sembly passed a resolve that it would prefer death rather than 
share political rights with "a degenerate and bastard race." 

Bitter feuds continued to prevail in the colony until the provin- 
cial provinces were arrayed against each other, and open war 
broke out between the Governor General and the Colonial As- 
sembly. In the struggle the free people of color were invoked by 
the former, and he made such head against the Assembly, that the 
whole body, driven to desperation, resolved to embark for France 
and lay its grievances before the National Assembly. Meanwhile 
the mulattoes continued to be the subjects of the grossest out- 
rages and insults, and began to lose their patience. 

Vincent or James Oge, an educated mulatto, in Paris, who had 
for a long time been laboring to reclaim the rights of his peo- 
9 



110 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

pie, disgusted at an explanatory decree of the National Assembly, 
out of heart, irritated and desperate, abandoned Paris, landed at 
Cape Francois, put himself at the head of two hundred of his 
friends, resolved to compel concessions. No rights but those of 
the mulattoes were in question. The response to his demands, 
was a force of six hundred men sent to punish him. These were 
routed. They were followed by an army of twelve hundred 
strong. Oge and his fellow-chief, Eaptiste Chavanne, were taken, 
led bare-headed in their shirts into the public square, with ropes 
around their necks, and then placed upon the wheel, where, with 
faces upturned, and their thighs, legs, and arms broken, they died 
a horrible and lingering death. This was never forgotten; it 
filled the hearts of the free colored population with undying hate. 

The consequences of the unwise, vacillating, inconsistent legis- 
lation of the National Assembly, were most ruinous. Nothing 
could exceed the consternation of the great planters ; they looked 
with dismay upon the elevation of the petits blancs ; and both were 
fired with deadly animosity against the mulattoes. "Amid all the 
varying animosity of party warfare," says Brown, in his history of 
St. Domingo, "on one subject the unanimity was perfect. This 
was the doggedness of Creole prejudice when the question was 
brought up to establish the political rights of the mulattoes. Up 
to this moment, despite all the influence of the home govern- 
ment, these people had been excluded from their rights. The 
Constituent Assembly at Paris, to obviate all doubt, and settle the 
question, decided. May 15th, 1791, that "all people of color resid- 
ing in the French Colonies, and born of free parents, were enti- 
tled to the same privileges as French citizens, and among others, 
to the right of voting at elections, and to seats in the Provincial 
and Colonial Assemblies. The violence of the colonists now over- 
leaped all bounds. The parties swore to resist force by force." 

All this time the free people of color were quiet, carefully ab- 
staining from violence, relying upon the energy and good faith of 
the home government. An influential member of their class 
wrote to a friend in Paris : " We have never been guilty of mur- 
dering any one, or of intending any one's death ; yet our own 
blood has been poured out like water. We could retaliate; but 
we refrain. The idea that the negroes might take advantage of 
such hostilities to desolate this beautiful country, is enough to 
make us renounce the thought." 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. Ill 

The slaves had hitherto been perfectly tranquil. The struggle 
had not touched their rights ; no claim was set up for them. But 
now the noise of the conflict about them attracted their attention. 
Their masters, too, apprehensive that their discussions about 
rights, and the general disorganization of society, might tempt 
them to revolt, doubled the patrols. This excited the amazement 
of the negroes. Is it wonderful that when society appeared to be 
in a state of dissolution, and civil war raged on every side, the 
slaves being sometimes armed by their masters in their bloody 
conflicts, that the bonds of so unnatural a system as slavery began 
to give way ? 

In 1796, a few insurrectionary movements took place in differ- 
ent sections, but were suppressed by measures of unheard of cru- 
elty. General Caradeux caused the heads of fifty slaves to be cut 
off on the Aubay plantation, and stuck on poles along the hedges, 
like palm-trees! What could be expected ? On the night of the 
22d of August, 1791, the slaves in the northern provinces rose 
upon their masters, and in four days one-third of the province was 
a smoking heap of ruins. Then began " the horrors of St. Domin- 
go." From that time till order was re-established by Touissant, 
the Island was a hell in which all the furies seemed to be let 
loose. Every man's hand was against his brother — the poor 
whites, the European residents, the Creole planters, the mulattoes, 
now turned their weapons against each other, and then united for 
a time in beating back the black hordes which pressed upon them. 
These revolted, not because they were emancipated, but because they 
were enslaved; and their revolt was sustained and directed by 
French loyalists and the counsels of Spain. 

On the 16th of September, 1792, three French Commissioners 
arrived with authority to regulate the affairs of the province. 
They stationed themselves at different points ; Sauthonax at Cape 
Francois, Polverel at Port au Prince, and Ailhaude at Aux Cayes. 
The last soon abandoned his charge in despair, and returned 
home. A strife sprung up between Sauthonax and M. Galbaud, 
lately arrived from France with the appointment of Governor. 
The commission of Galbaud v^as soon revoked; but he deter- 
mined to hold on to his authority. A civil war was the result. 
The streets of Cape Francois were drenched in blood. Sautho- 
nax, hard pressed, and on the point of losing all, proclaimed liberty 



112 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

to the slaves in the city, rallied them to his stand, and invited one 
of the insurgent hands to come to his aid, and then let them loose 
upon (Jalbaud and his sympathizers. Galbaud's forces were 
routed ; the city caught fire in the conflict ; the forces of Sautho- 
nax fell upon it and pillaged it, and the citizens who escaped with 
their lives, took refuge on board some ship in the harbor. Hun- 
dreds of millions' worth of property was destroyed and the loss of 
life was enormous; and to attribute this to the abolition of slavery, 
argues unpardonable ignorance or something worse. 

No decree of emancipation had yet been promulgated. Ac- 
counts were received of great preparations of England to make a 
descent upon the colony. As a last resort, Sauthonax, by a sol- 
emn act August 20, 1793, proclaimed the abolition of slavery 
throughout St. Domingo, and the admission of the blacks to the 
rights of citizenship. In the south and west, where the slaves 
had not generally revolted, the proclamation excited extreme 
alarm and indignation. A grand council of the Commissioners 
and planters was held at Port au Prince, and the latter were per- 
suaded to submit. 

"The negroes of the south were appeased by this graciousness 
of their masters, and returned to their labors on the neglected 
plantations. They began co plant provisions for their sustenance, 
to relieve the distresses of the famine which were beginning to 
press heavily upon them from the failure of importation from 
abroad." * There is not the record of a single insurrection caused 
by this act of emancipation. But though the liberated negroes 
were contented, the planters were sullen and exasperated against 
France. The planters agreed to aid the British in taking posses- 
sion of the island ; and the British agreed to enable them to re- 
duce their negroes to their former slavery again. The war against 
the blacks was now carried on with bloody atrocity; many of the 
mulattoes co-operating with the English and planters, to reduce 
them to bondage again. The Island seemed utterly God-forsaken, 
when TouissANT L'Overture putting himself at the head of the 
insurgent blacks, and th3 remnant of native troops, carries on the 
war against the English, until in 1793 they are compelled to evac- 
uate the Island. 

May 5, 1797, Touissant was declared general-in-chief of the 

*Brovvn's History. 



FACTS FOR THE PEOPX^E. 113 

colony. His influence over the liberated blacks was omnipotent. 
All authorities concur in representing-, that civil feuds disappeared 
under his wise measures. The blacks went to work, order was 
restored, the whites enjoyed security, commerce began to flourish, 
and all the arts of peace were again taking root. The indepen- 
dence of the Island was thoroughly established under the name of 
"the Republic ofHAYTi." 

The next attempt to subjugate the island was made by Bona- 
parte. " Early in January, 1802, a French army of 20,000 men 
were landed at St. Domingo, under General Le Clerc, and various 
reinforcements afterwards followed." " The war was waged with 
atrocious cruelty on the part of the French ; and the blacks aided 
by the climate succeeded in destroying about forty thousand of 
their enemies in about eleven months ; and on the J9th of Novem- 
ber, 1802, the wrecks of the invading army surrendered to Dessa- 
lines, the black chief." * 

"In 1805, Dessalines was appointed governor for life, and soon 
after assumed the title of emperor. He was slain by a military 
conspiracy in 1806, and was succeeded by Christophe as Chief 
Magistrate for life; Petion, a mulatto, being a rival candidate, 
and defeated in a severe battle in 1807. In 1811, he assumed the 
title of King, and was massacred in a military conspiracy in 1820. 
But during the whole period from 1801 to 1818, Petion was 
President of the mulatto population, in the south and west part of 
the island. He died in 1818, greatly lamented, for he was a good 
and able ruler, and Avas succeeded by Boyer, who on the death of 
Christophe, in 1820, became President of the whole of the French 
part of the island. The Spanish part was ceded to France in 
1794, but was held by the Spanish population till 1821, when they 
off*ered to join the republic of Columbia, but were rejected. They 
have remained independent ever since, though in number, proba- 
bly not exceeding 100,000. The Pre&idency of Boyer continued 
till his expulsion a few months ago." 

"Here, then, is a history of the colored population of Hayti for 
forty years. In that period, they have exhibited one civil war 
between the blacks and mulattoes ; two dethronements of mon- 
archs, and one expulsion of a President, and three changes of 
government ; two from republicanism to monarchy, and one from 
monarchy to republicanism. This looks like a formidable cata- 
logfue of discords. But how does it compare with the catalogue 
of France? During this period we have seen France pass from 
a republic under a directory, to a republic under a Consul for 
years ; then to a Consulship for life ; then to the rule of an 

* Jay's View. 



114 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

Emperor; then to that of a Constitutional King; then to that of 
Emperor; then to that of another Constitutional King- strivinir to 
overthrow the constitution ; then to that of a 'Citizen King,' sur- 
rounded by republican institutions, and again to a republic. 
During the same period, France has exhibited the civil war of La 
Vendee, two dethronements of Kings, two of Emperors, two inva- 
sions of the * allies;' and Paris, ' which is France,' has exhibited 
the massacre of the 'sections,' and the ' tnemorable three day-s ;' 
and we may add to the catalogue not less than six constitutions. 
And though no King or Emperor has been assassinated in this 
period, the attempts to assassinate Napoleon were 'legion,' and 
those to kill the King have been more than we can count. Now 
if all the disorders of Hayti prove the incapacity of its people for 
self government, what story do those of France tell for French- 
men ? Especially when we reflect that many of the disorders of 
Hayti grew out of those of France. 

"Shall we go to Mexico and South America for comparisons in 
capacity for self-government? Let the innumerable contests 
among generals, and the horrible oppressions which they have 
inflicted upon the people answer the questions. Shall we go to 
Spain and Portugal ? In each, the revolutions have been like the 
changes of the season, and are siill in pros^ress, and we may chal- 
lenge the bloodiest details of Haytien history, for parallels to the 
atrocities of Spain. If Dessalines and Christcphe were cruelty- 
rants, as they were, what shall we say of such monsters as Miauel 
and Ferdinand VII. ? If the late anarchy of Hayti was deplorable, 
what is that of Spain? Well may those who deny the capacity of 
the Haytiens for self government, say that comparisons are ' odi- 
ous.' " 

But we are told that the Haytiens are rude and uncultivated 
barbarians, and therefore unfit to be acknowledged as the rightful 
governors of so fair a country. 

To this, it may be answered, that there is no surer index to the 
civilization of any nation, than its laws and institutions. By a 
brief reference to the provisions of the constitution of Hayti, we 
shall see at a glance that such charges are the vilest slander. 
That instrument is prefaced by the following preamble : 

" The people of Hayti proclaim, in the presence of the Supreme 
Being, the present Constitution, that they may consecrate forever, 
its rights, its civil and political guaranties, and its national inde- 
pendence." 

" Every citizen, over twenty-one years of age, exercises politi- 
cal rights." 

" Haytiens are equal in the eye of the law, and are equally ad- 
missible to all civil and military employments, and there is no 
distinction of orders." 

" The right of property is inviolable," 



FACTS 'FOR THE PEOPLE 115 

**The freedom of speech and of the press are recognized. Ani. 
all forms of religion are equally tolerated.'' 

" Schools are established, a^d the mode of teaching untram- 
melled.'^ 

" Th'C trial by jury is established in all criminal matters." 

" The riglit of the people, peaceably to assemble and discuss 
political subjects, also the right of petition, recognized." 

The privileges and authority of the National Assembly, are the 
same as the American Congress, Their form of government is 
essentially like our own. 

Such are some of the provisions of the fundamental law of the 
Republic of Hayti. Now compare them with tiie laws of more 
than half the States of this Union, which convert nearly one-half 
of their entire population into goods and chattels; and which ex- 
pose them for sale at public auction like horses and swine in the 
market ; and then say who are the greatest barbarians, the Ilay- 
tiens or the Americans ? 

As an additional evidence of the civilization of Hayti, we insert 
the following from Brooks' Universal Gazdteer — Art. — St. Lh^ 
mingo : — 

" A college has been founded and liberally endowed at Cape 
Haytien, in which provision is made for instruction in all the lan- 
guages, arts, and sciences, usually taught in European establish* 
ments of the like kind ; public schools have been established in 
most of the principal towns of the west part of the Island; and be 
the future destiny of St. Domingo what it may, she is at present 
one of the most interesting subjects for contemplation in the 
world ; an age has hardly passed away since the bulk of the in- 
iiabitanis were held in the most abject and degraded state of 
bondajje; since when, they have successfully resisted the arms of 
two of the most powerful nations of their time, and now remain 
pursuing a silent hist steady course towards givinsf a new and ad- 
ditionally important character to the social relations of the civil- 
ized world." 

To show that the civilization of Hayti is not going backwards, 
we insert the following from the N'atlonal Intelligencer of July 
24, 1847 : 

" The Journal of (/ommerce has files of papers from Port au 
Prince to the 8th instant. 

The Legislature was busily engaged in carrying out the meas- 
ures of the administration, judiciously conceived for the promotion 
of the public prosperity. Having established the conveyance of 
mails on certain of the great public routes, the government were 



116 TACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

taking- measures to respond to the demands of the people for the 
extension of this public convenience, and had already adopted an 
efficient system for the repair and maintenance of the roads. 
Great encouragement is offered to the multiplication of the chan- 
nels of industry and the increase of production, and a temporary 
premium of three cents per pound has been accorded to the ex- 
portation of sugar. 

The papers congratulate the people that the appropriation of the 
public funds has been devolved upon the Chambers by the admin- 
istration, for the first time in the history of the Republic. After 
having passed through anarchy the most complete, the omnipotence 
of a dictatorship, and the vain semblance of constitutional power, 
we are now (says the Manifeste) in the full enjoyment of a Repre- 
sentative Government. 

MM. the Senators B. Ardouin and Delva embarked at Jacmel 
in the steamer of the 10th ulUmo. They are bearers of the con- 
vention, signed by the French and Haytien Plenipotentiaries, for 
the payment of the indemnity due to France, to be submitted for 
ratification to the King of the French. 

M. Ardouin will remain in France, as the representative of 
Hayti, with the title of Minister Resident near the French Gov- 
ernment. M. Eugene S. Villevaleix goes out as his Secretary of 
Legation." 

" For those who question the industry of the Haytiens, we sub- 
join the following tables, showing the exports from the Island of 
late years. No belter proof can be given of the general industry 
of a people, than the amount of their productions; and the records 
of the custom-house is one of the readiest evidences of this ; 
though of course but an approach to a just estimate. It enables 
us, however, to compare one nation with another." It will be re- 
membered that the population of the Island is estimated at 800,000 
or 900,000. Not much greater than that of the State of Massa- 
chusetts. 



From Essays on Colonies, S,'c., by Judge Jerimie. 

EXPORTS IN 1832, FROM HAYTI. 

Coffee, 50,000,000 lbs., valued at $4,400,000 

Cotton, 1,500,000 " 

Tobacco, 500,000 " 

Cocoa, 500,000 " 

Dye-Wood, 5,000,000 " 

Tortoise Shell, 12,000 " 

Mahogany, 6,000,000 feet. 

Hides, 80,000 lbs. 



FACTS FOR THE FEOFLE. 



117 



From the American Almanac 



Emp(>rts to the 

U.S. 
from Hnyti. 



Exi)orfs fioin 

U.S. 

to Hayli. 



Average annual Average cinniial 
imports for tliir-jexports lor tliir- 
teen years, endino teen years, eiidin^jt 



France In 1833, 

exported 

to llayti 

$i701,729. ' Same 

Average annHal!\ear, her imports 

exports from 1830 "from llayti, 



Exiiorts from 
Eii»lan(i 
to Ha)ti. 



IS.*; 



>, >f^ 1,759,- 'm.mn ted to §905,- 
|432.* 



184!, liiil, 702, 106., 1S4 1, !pl, 225,700. 216. 

This shows a balance of trade against the United States, and in 
favor ofll'iyti, of $476,401) per annum. Also a balance of more 
than $200,000 against Frai^ce, and in favor of llayti. The aver- 
age anjouRt of income to the government for seven years, ending 
in 1825, was $2,687,358 ; and the average expenditure for the 
same time was $2,526,741, showing an average annual excess of 
income over the expenditures of $j 60,617. 

"A government, we need hardly remark, niisst be efficient, 
which for a series of years exhibits an almost uninterriipted excess 
of income over expenditure — the revenue being entirely created 
by trade." 

So much for the indolence and poverty of the Haytiens. Their 
annual exports, accQrdiRg to pop'iLition, are about equal to those 
of the United States. 

And i3o\v let us inquire what has been the conduct of the 
United States towards this heroic republic, which had thus man- 
fully and successftilly struggled for iis independence. 

They have ever refused to acknowledge their independence, or 
to enter into any civil or diplonmtic relations with them whatever. 
This nation professes to glory in the doctrine that " all men are 
created equal, and have an inalienable right to liherty," and it 
should not only have been first and foreraGst, to acknowledge the 
independence of the Haytiens, but the first generously to step for- 
ward and aid them in obtaining it. Instead of this, v/hat do we 
see.' Instigated by the erni^sariee of Bonaparte, who was exas- 
perated at the loss of his army, and his inability to subjugate the 
Island, as well as their own hatred of the colored race. Congress 
passed an act on the 28th of February, 1806, " to suspend the com- 
mercial intercourse between the United States and certain parts of 
the Island of St. Domingo." f 

The law provided that any vessel trading from ar.y part oi tim 

* Light and Truth, p. 395. 

f Laws of lite U. S^^ vol. 1, p. 4. 



118 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE. 

United States to any of the prohibited parts of St. Domingo, to- 
gether with the cargo of such vessel, should be forfeited, &c. This 
act was never repealed, but expired by its own limitation. 

One of the subjects of consideration at the Congress of Panama, 
which has already been mentioned, was the recognition of the in- 
dependence of Hayti. We here give some extracts from speeches 
in Congress, while the subject of the Panama mission was under 
discussion there. 

Mr. Berrien of Georgia : — " Consistently with our own safe- 
ty, can the people of the ^ouih pennit the intercourse which would 
result from the establishing relations of any sort with Ilayti ? Is 
the emancipated slave to be admitted into their ports, to spread 
the doctrines of insurrection, and to strengthen and invigorate 
them, by exhibiting in his own person an example of successful 
revolt ? " 

Mr. Benton of Missouri: — ''The peace of eleven States of 
this Union will not permit the fruits of a successful negro insur- 
rection to be seen among them ; — it will not permit the fact to be 
seen and told, that they are to find friends among the white people 
of the United States." 

Mr. Hamilton of South Carolina: — " It is proper that on this 
occasion I should speak with candor and without reserve ; that 1 
should avow what 1 believe to be the sentiments of the Southern 
people on this question, and this is, that Haytien independence is 
not to be tolerated in anyformP 

Mr. Hayne of South Carolina — "With niHhing connected 
■with slavery can we consent to treat with other nations ; and least 
of all ought we to touch the question of the independence of 
Hayti, in conjunction with the revolutionary governments whoso 
own history affords an example scarcely less fatal to our repose. 
These governments have proclaimed principles of liberty and 
equality ; and have marched to victory under the banner of uni- 
versal emancipation. You find men of color at t!ie head of their 
armies, in the legislative halls, and in the executive departments. 
Our policy with regard to Hayti is plain. We never can ack- 
nowledge her independence. Let our government direct all our 
Ministers in South America and Mexico, to protest against the 
independence of Hayti." 

Mr. Johnson of Louisiana : — "It may be proper to express to 
the South American States, the unalterable opinion entertained 
here in regard to intercourse with them. The unadvised recogni- 
tion of that Island, (Hayti,) and the public reception of their Min- 
isters, will nearly sever our diplomatic intercourse, and bring 
about a separation and alienation injurious to both. I deem it of 
the highest concern to the political connection of these countries. 



FACTS FOR THE TEOPLE. 119 

to remonstrate against a measure so justly offensive to us, and to 
make that remonstrance effectual.* 

Twelve years after, on the 17th of December, 1838, a petition 
was presented to Congress, praying for the establishment of the 
usual international relations with Hayti. As soon as the objects 
of the petition were known, a storm was raised on the question of 
its reception; and no less than thirty-two members voted against 
it. A few extracts from the speeches on that occasion, will show- 
that time had nothing abated the bitterness of feeling on the part 
of the white skinned " democracy," towards their Haytien neigh- 
bors. 

The Chairman of the Committee of Foreign Relations, to which 
the memorial was finally referred, said, "that similar petitions 
had been sent there the last session, which had never been reported 
on. This would take a similar course ; it would never be heard of 
again.^^ 

Mr. Legare of South Carolina: — "As sure as you live, sir, 
if this cause is permitted to go on, the sun of this Union will go 
down — it will go down in BLOOD — and go down to rise no 
more. I will vote unhesitatingly against nefarious designs like 
these. They are treason ; yes sir, I pronounce the authors of 
such things traitors ; traitors not to their country only, but to the 
ivhole human race^ 

This refined gentleman either meant to except the Hayfiens, or 
to say that they were no part of the human race, 

Mr. Wise of Virginia: — " We are called upon to recognize 
the insurrectionists who rose on their French masters. A large 
number of those now in power in this black republic, are slaves 
who cut their master's throats. And will any gentleman tell me 
now, that slaves, aided by an English army, ought to be recog- 
nized by this government ? Never will I — never will my constit- 
uents be forced into this. This is the only body of men who have 
emancipated themselves by butchering their masters. They have 
long been free, T admit; yet if they had been free for centuries, — 
if time himself should confront me, and shake his hoary locks at 
my opposition, I should say to him, I owe more to my constituents, 
to the quiet of my people, than I owe, or can owe to mouldy pre- 
scriptions, however ancient." 

This Virginian for once has been wise above what is written. 
The " English army " of which he speaks went to St. Domingo, 
not for the purpose of aiding the slaves in obtaining their freedom, 

* Cong. Debates, vol. 2. 



120 FACTS FOR THE PEOPLE, 

but to assist the masters in reducing them to slavery, after they 
had been emancipated ; with wl)at success has already been 
shown. He seeins also to have forgotten, that Washington, and 
Hancock, and Warren, and Jefferson, and Franklin, and Henry, 
and probably his own father — if not a tory — had but a little 
■while before, risen on their English " masters," and " cut their 
throats;" and obtained their freedom by "butchering" them, in 
the same way the Haytiens had done. But then, these latter 
bear a different complexion from the former, which makes the 
difference. 

"In 1842, the imports from Hayti into the United States ex- 
ceeded in value the imports from Prussia, Sweden and Norway, 
Denmark and the Danish West Indies, Ireland and Scotland, Hol- 
land, Belgium, Dutch West Indies, British West Indies, Spain, 
Portugal and all Italv, Turkey, and the Levant, or any one of the 
South American republics."* 

Although this government has been willing to hunt down fugi- 
tive slaves, to the remotest corners of the continent, and even 
across the ocean, it affords no protection to this commerce. 

" Our trade with Flayti is embarrassed ; it is subjected to se- 
vere discriminating duties. We are probably the least favored of 
any people in the ports of that Republic. Tonnage duties and 
vexatious port charges, discourage and oppress our commerce 
there. The acknowledged cause of all the embarrassments to 
that trade, is found in the fact that our government refuses to 
acknowledge the government of Hayti. While all other powers 
have acknowledged them as an independent sovereignty, we stand 
aloof as if they were a lawless tribe of savages. We have no rep- 
resentative at the Island of any grade ; nor have they a public 
officer accredited here. No commercial relation, therefore, exists 
between the two governments."! 

And Northern men are willing thus to sacrifice their immense 
trade with Hayii, rather than incur the displeasure of the slave 
power, by pressing up Congress to acknowledge its independence. 

Such have been some of the schemes and machinations of the 
slaveocracy of this nation to extend and perpetuate that system of 
untold horrors. But the cunning shall yet be taken in iheir own 
craliiness. For a returning sense of justice, a clearer perception 
of the great truth of man's brotheihood, the onward progress of 
the swelling tide of freedom, shall yet sweep the accursed system 
of slavery from the face of the earth. 

* Jay's View. t Speech of Mr. Grennell, H. R. Dec. 18, 1838. 



I 



8 



Trice, 20 Cents. 



HISTORY 



THE MEXICAN WAR, 



, PACTS m\{ THE PEOPLE, ^ 



SHOWING TIIK RELATION OF THE 



UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT TOi 



SLAVERY 



COMril.KI.* FROM OFFICIAL AND AUTHENTIC DOCUMENTS. 



BY LORING MOODY. 



^ICONl) EIHTION, WITH ADDITIONS AND CORRECTIONS. 



BOSTON: 
BELA MARSH, 25 CORNHILL. 

1848. 



m. 



]¥ 



TESTIMONIALS. 



\ . 

s Facts for the People. — -Mr. Loring jVloody, of Boston, bass 
I handed ns a paniphle!, being a coinpilatioa from llie works ol> 
^ Wm. Ja,y, J. R. Gitlciings, and others, with valuable additions by^ 
'I Mr. Moody, on the relation of the U. S. Government to Slavery, j 
\ It embraces the History of the Mexican VVar, its origin and ob-5 
I ject.>=. It is a very valuable siore-house of facts, compiled almost^ 
J entirely from the U. S. Laws, and Public Documents. We^ 
\ know of no work equal to it for general circulation. Price, 20$ 
\ cents. We urged upon Mr. Moody the importance of having the > 
>. work on sale at the Book Stores of this city, and we trust an ^ 
I arrangement will be made to bring that work into the reach of^ 
i our fellow citizens. It traces the slave action of the government^ 
? from 1790, and brings it to our own year, 1847. — BangorX 
\ Gazette, Jan. 29, 1847. \ 

Facts for the People, showing the relations of the U. S. 
Government to Slavery, embracing a history of the Mexican 
War, its origin and object. Compiiett' from official and other 
authentic documents. By Loring Moody. \ 

We trust and hope that the work will be purchased exlensiyely^ 
\ for several reascns. 1st. It is a compilation of facts upon impor-^ 
\ tant subjects. 2d. It is sold at a low price, and whether- the? 

> reader can agree with Mr. Moody or not, in respect to his infer- ^ 
\ ences, the facts are worth the time and the price of the book, — > 
^ to be used by citizens of all parties, — each in his own way. — \ 
^ Evening Gazette. ^ 

\ Facts on Slavery, — By Loring Moody, published and for sale \ 
\ at the office of the Liberator, 21 Cornhill. Mr. Moody has made^ 
I up a small 18mo. volurrxC, of 142 pages of facts, -'showing the? 
\ relations of the United Stales Government -to Slavery;" includ-| 
I ing a " history of the Mexican War," to the capture of Vera^ 

> Cruz. He has drawn freely for his facts, upon Jay's View of? 

> Slavery, (liddings' Rights of the Free States, Lundy's War in-^ 
Texas, &c. It is a useful compilation of facts. — Einoncipator.\ 










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